


Ruination with Wings

by imperialhuxness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Hates Kylo Ren, CW: brief and non-recurring suicidal ideation, Exile, Getting Back Together, Hux is Good With Kids, M/M, On the Run, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the most self-indulgent thing i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-13 16:48:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhuxness/pseuds/imperialhuxness
Summary: Hux didn't intend to survive the capture of theFinalizer. His newly dethroned ex has other plans....“So you brought me along to face capture, trial, and eventual execution rather than letting me die honorably of my wounds,” Hux finishes for him. He affects frigidity, but his breath hitches anyway.Huxisthe Order--he shouldn’t have outlived it. It would be like cutting a man in half and expecting him to grow a new head and shoulders.





	1. Chapter 1

unsignificantly  
off the coast  
there was

a splash quite unnoticed  
this was  
Icarus drowning

_(William Carlos Williams, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”)_

\--oOo--

Hux awakens to the bone-jarring thrum of a short-range transport engaged at lightspeed. He registers this--the obnoxious hum of an overtaxed _Lambda_ -class--before all else.

The rest comes in incoherent pieces: the low gray ceiling of a bunk, blurry between his eyelashes; the fact that this is a _bunk_ , and an unfamiliar one; the throbbing ache in his left side; the reek of bacta. He blinks at the ribbed paneling over his head, and waits for the disorientation to pass, flooded out by memory, like the usual ephemeral panic of waking up in a different bed. It doesn’t.

In the moment it takes to become aware he’s waiting on his own memory, he matches some of the sensations. The blaster bolt--the searing, unbearable heat of it through his ribcage. Numbness. Falling.

His breathing catches, pulse hammers through his ears.

_The Resistance._  

The screech of alarms at a breach in the shields. Then the hull.

_Boarded, sir._ _We've been boarded._

Boarded. They weren't supposed to.

They were going to blow up the ship. Hux had thought they were going to blow up the ship. They _ought to have_ blown up--

“Good morning.”

A voice he hasn’t woken up to in two years cuts over the rapid staccato of his own heartbeat. (One more incongruent piece.)

“Ren?” Hux tries. It comes out hoarse, splintered, and he realizes his mouth is almost painfully dry. He coughs, attempting to clear his throat, but the clench of the muscles shoots a white-hot ray of pain through what must be his blaster wound. He winces, hand going instinctively to the injury. His bare skin is covered by the source of the bacta-smell, a soft gel patch spanning roughly the width of his hand.

For a moment he listens for the whir of a med-droid’s limbs, the soothing tones of its diagnosis, but there’s only the beat of heavy footfalls on the black flextile of the floor. He shifts, hissing a sharp inhale, and makes to prop himself up on his elbows.

“Don’t try moving on it.” Ren’s shadow falls across the bunk before Ren himself comes into view, leaning in just enough that Hux can’t call it looming. “There’s only one spare medpac, so that patch needs to last.”

Hux neither finishes sitting up nor lays back down as instructed, frozen mid-motion as the data points cohere into something like a narrative, in which Ren figures prominently. Hux is acutely aware of his bare torso, the exposed contours of his collarbones above the coverlet. Gooseflesh stands up on his skin--Ren must have the cooling system on full blast.

“You did this,” Hux states, for lack of any more astute commentary. He gestures vaguely to his sore left side with his right hand, and means the bacta, not the wound. “What happened?”

“You were shot.”

“I’m aware of that.” _Fucking hell._ There are many reasons Hux stopped at one drunken and ill-advised fuck since Ren became Supreme Leader, but absurd conversations like this top the list. “I’ve apparently missed something between taking a bolt and waking up in your care.”

Ren doesn’t answer. He holds eye contact and thins his lips as much as possible, gaze working around Hux’s features. It’s one of Ren’s worst expressions, like he can see right through Hux’s chest to the thin mattress beneath him. Can saw through his skull to dig around in his brain, looking for neural pathways to rewrite.

It would be more intimidating, however, if Ren didn’t look like shit. He’s paler than usual, blanched further by the soot of lightsaber combat against his bloodless skin, black smudges like abrasions along his hairline, his jaw, his scar. His eyes aren’t merely red-rimmed--that’s typical enough to hardly merit noticing--but bloodshot. At this proximity, Hux can make out the individual burst capillaries, a gory arabesk below each dark iris. His hair is tousled; lips steady but dry, the lower one peeling (he’s probably been chewing it).

And his hands--when Hux’s gaze falls to them - the left nerveless, the right clenched around a silver disk that must be a portable holoproj - he notes an unmistakable tremor.

“What happened?” Hux repeats, though the bottom line is apparent.

Ren lowers his gaze, almost too quickly, but doesn’t answer. Instead he raises his unsteady right hand, uncurling his fingers to reveal the holoproj, lens facing up, in his open palm. He powers it on with his thumb.

“We lost,” he says, in the instant before the image materializes and the sound picks up. There’s something broken, bitter, and resigned in his tone all at once--that catches Hux more off-guard than his words.

After all, they’ve been losing since they lost their last foothold in the Core, and have slowly been driven toward the galaxy’s periphery, shrinking ship by ship. It was only a matter of time.

Still, Ren’s voice shouldn’t sound so hollow.

The ghastly-blue image hovering above his hand has figured in Hux’s contingency plans, if not his very nightmares: the _Finalizer_ , shattered, a charred hole blown in its starboard side, shedding a trail of tortured metal into the void.

_“...live footage from the Outer Rim,”_ runs a voiceover. _“Early this standard cycle, Resistance forces captured the First Order’s flagship after a twelve-hour standoff--”_

The debris from the ship’s side is microscopic in the scaled-down, pixellated image, which is just as well: Hux can pick out no bodies. He remembers the strike--the sudden blare of klaxons, shouting orders above them, the pallor of the lieutenant who’d served as a courier: _“We’ve been hit, sir.”_ Her wrist comm chimed, and she looked back up at Hux.  _"Resistance troops detected in the hangar."_

Hux watches the slow bleed of the wreck, the image quivering a bit in Ren’s unsteady hand,  hearing little, until it changes. His own face frowns back at him, cast monstrous by the blue tint.

_“Grand Marshal Armitage Hux, pictured now, is one of two fugitive members of the First Order’s High Command--”_

“That’s a terrible likeness,” Ren says, over the newscaster.

It is--a decade old ID holo  with regrettably close-cropped hair--but Hux doesn’t acknowledge the remark. He’s too distracted by the stone that’s dropped into the pit of his stomach, the clamminess spreading across his skin.

This hasn’t happened. This can’t have happened. (He’s known this was going to happen.)

_“The second fugitive is the First Order’s Supreme Leader himself, Kylo Ren, né Ben Solo--now shown--”_

Hux’s severe face morphs into Ren’s haunted one. His holo is also dated, and by his expression, Snoke must have commissioned it mere days after Ren’s recruitment: he’s staring into the holocam like a ghost is breaking through the lens.

_“Efforts are ongoing to apprehend the First Order’s most dangerous war criminals, and Resistance security officials are open to tips from the public at their HoloNet domain--”_

The image configures back to Hux, apparently to refresh the memory of any wannabe vigilantes watching the _Galaxy Beacon_. Hux wets his lips, and his side throbs with the spike in his pulse.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Hux wasn’t supposed to leave the ship--the ship wasn’t supposed to be boarded. The Resistance certainly shouldn’t be running clips of its gutted carcass: the whole thing should be reduced to cinders (like the Hosnian System). _Fugitive_ , therefore, should never have been attached to Hux’s name.

Hux tears his eyes from the shaky image, meets Ren’s with something like urgency. He inches further upright. “You let them take the ship.”

Ren’s gaze sparks. “The ship was already gone by the time they boarded. What else could I have done?”

It isn’t a question, but Hux has the answer. “I don’t know, Ren,” he shoots back, “perhaps _not run away_ would have been a decent option. Put the Force to work, even. Or at least not get your face coded on the holonews and go down _fighting_.”

“Just like they wanted?” Ren’s right hand falls to his side, still clutching the holoproj, the blue image sprouts through his fingers, shifting back to his ID holo just as he balls his fist. His own head hangs upside-down from his hand. He’s leaning further over Hux, and his volume has ticked up a notch. “They were sending the Jedi aboard to distract me, or-- or try to turn me one last time, or something. I could sense it, and I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Facing her, I mean. The ship was fucked regardless, so--”

“You ran away,” Hux supplies.

“I _didn’t_ ,” Ren all but spits, clenching his fists hard enough to shut off the holoproj. The image of his face evaporates. “It was about...probability. I--”

“ _You_ made a calculated decision?” Would have been convenient if he’d applied this skill a few months before half the Order’s territory had slipped through their collective fingers.

“Shut up,” Ren snaps back, but menace builds in his tone. “You said you wanted to hear what happened.”

Hux flicks his wrist toward him in a dismissive _do-go-on_ sort of gesture.

Ren goes on, tautly, “It was too late. If I fought her, the ship would go down whether I won or lost. If I didn’t fight her, her people would still take the ship. They’d either kill me, or take me back to face--” Ren doesn’t trail off so much as abruptly sever the thought. Leia Organa’s presence hangs in the brief silence, and Ren’s gaze falls to Hux’s hand, bone-white against the gray coverlet.

Ren swallows and picks back up. “The only thing left was to run. And I-- I sensed that, no matter what, things wouldn’t go well on the bridge, so--”

“So you brought me along to face capture, trial, and eventual execution rather than letting me die honorably of my wounds,” Hux finishes for him. He affects frigidity, but his breath hitches anyway. Hux _is_ the Order--he shouldn’t have outlived it. It would be like cutting a man in half and expecting him to grow a new head and shoulders.

Ren doesn’t get it. He bends until his face is near level with Hux’s, till they’re nose to nose and eye to eye. His lip curls almost ferally, and his reddened eyes are stormy. “What you mean to say,” he all but snarls, “is _thank you_.”

Before Hux can respond, Ren’s drawn back and turned on his heel, heading for the cockpit. His tattered cloak flaps around his ankles.

\--oOo--

 

As soon as Ren’s footsteps fade, the impossibility of the situation washes over Hux. _Today is the end_ \-- Full stop.

His side aches, and the ceiling over him hangs gray and low and oppressive, like it’s heralding an Arkanian monsoon.

There’s nothing he can do about it. About any of it. No contingency plan, no alternative assessment, no second chance on the sim. No two ways around it: how useless he is, how useless his _entire fucking life_ has been, if it’s to come to this.

To nothing.

To Kylo fucking Ren scooping him off the bridge floor like so much dead weight.

He clenches his eyes shut against the crushing enormity of it -- of everything--and his hand strays to the bacta patch, presses down almost compulsively. The jolt of pain that follows, coursing from the wound in the middle of his ribs up to his heart, then halfway down his thigh, momentarily strips his mind of anything else.

He inhales brittlely, and the _Finalizer_ ’s broken form draws itself across his mind’s eye. He can’t see the bodies in the trail of debris, but they’re there. He was useless to stop it, and--

He presses down again, harder, feeling past the layer of gel to the ridge underneath where the skin is knitting back together. He doesn’t relent, digs his dull nails into the patch like it’s the heel of his hand. Fresh pain sears through his ribcage--it feels like the plasma hitting home again and again, on an infinite loop. When his eyes fly open, yet his vision goes white, he lets up for a moment.

His pulse has spiked again, and he can feel his hands shaking like Ren’s under the coverlet. He could try breathing deeply, but he doesn’t want to calm down. (He isn’t sure he wants to _breathe_.)

It all meant nothing. Decades of training, abuse, and abuse-as-training. Every world the Order fought and killed for. Starkiller. Months of tolerating Ren’s leadership, biding his time, hoping that if he himself just did _enough_ , the tide would turn. (He did more-- _oppressed more_ , the history books will call it, and the tide only turned the faster.)

Useless.

He’s useless. Kept alive by Ren’s--his _what_? His pity, his infatuation, some compulsion of the Light he claims to hate?

Maybe he just needs a tight ass to plow in his exile, free of charge. This is a truer life-debt than pulling him from Starkiller on Snoke's orders ever was--he’ll expect some manner of compensation, and fuck--

Hux can’t stand it, digs his fingers into the patch again, intentionally pressing into the edges of the wound, and hates the startled sound that escapes him as he does. A sharp, soft cry, wordless. He looks at the ceiling, and doesn’t let up.

He was meant for more than this--he _has_ _been_ meant for more than this. And somehow, some way, he should have stopped it.

The ceiling is blinding white.

He could have taken the shot, every shot Ren inadvertently allowed him. If he himself hadn’t been so soft, if Ren weren’t so _miserable_ , so needy, so powerful--he could have done it.

The ceiling blurs black around the edges; Hux’s head reels for all he’s prone and still.

But even if he’d done it, he would have been disgusting. He would have lived, and it would have still meant nothing, have made him something he isn’t, because Ren saved him, and here he is, wishing that he’d killed him--and his side is on fire, and his vision swims with black, and his ears ring, and his ribs burn but the rest of him is vac-cold and the black is spreading, the black is winning and--

Then it’s all dark.

\--oOo--

 

When Hux regains consciousness for the second time, the pieces assemble themselves more quickly. Nothing has changed. The ship still hums, and the ceiling is dull again. The only thing that doesn’t return in full, inescapable force is the pain. There’s a stiffness there that isn’t quite numbness, and when he reaches to prod it, he feels pressure on the patch, but no pang of irritation.

The sorest point on his left side his bicep, and he sits up to examine it. A slim black bacta strip covers the telltale pinprick-bruise of an injection. The strip and the numbness of his wound add up unpleasantly: Ren must have shot him up with painkillers--symoxin probably,  standard issue for shuttle medpacs. He can only hope he wasn’t crying out in his sleep, or something equally embarrassing.

He massages the stiff muscle around the injection point. Would Ren had overdosed him, would Ren had _left him behind_. The panic rises again, the sheer desperate weakness of being caught between Ren’s mercy and the sights of the Resistance. He shouldn’t be here, this should be over, he needs--

He scans the cabin, instinctively searching for something, anything, that could end this, but he finds nothing, not even an airlock to jump out of. His greatcoat is slung over a chair, a pile of torn black fabric that must have been his tunic (Ren must have _cut it off him_ ) crumpled beneath it. He dropped his blaster when he fell on the bridge, but there’s a chance his knife is still in his sleeve.

Heart racing, frenzied, he grips the edge of the mattress, steeling himself to swing his legs over the side of the bed. In the process, he jostles an object beside his pillow, catches the rustle of cellophane.

The unexpected sound jolts him out of his own head, and he glances down at a vanilla-flavored ration bar, positioned for easy access. His stomach growls at the sight of it, the suggestion of food, and pinches acutely. Strange.

He stares at the bar, registering the fact of his appetite. _You have a body. That body needs sustenance. That body_ wants _to be sustained._ The overwhelming physical urge to _survive_ surprises him, and his hands work almost mechanically as he reaches down to take the bar, unwraps it, and takes the first sweet and mealy bite.

It tastes--unexpectedly--like an investment in whatever’s next. Like Ren’s location pinging as Starkiller crumbled under his feet; like hyperspace tracking; like _long live the Supreme Leader._ He’s soldiered on before (though now he’s no longer a soldier).

At any rate, Ren will probably sense anything he tries with the knife in time to come back and staunch his wounds (again). And even if Hux were to succeed, there’s something carnally shameful in the notion of Ren disposing of his body, scrubbing his blood off the floor. A burden to the last.

Hux finishes the nutrient bar and decides, at very least, to bide his time. Above all else, he-- _we_ , he supposes--must not be captured. It’s the worst-case scenario, and he won’t allow for it.

The news footage cycles back through his mind. If the Resistance is still accepting tips, they don’t have a substantial lead, but surely it’s only a matter of time before they catalogue which ship is missing, slice into the tracking systems, pin down the shuttle’s position from navicomp data and fuck--

The network.

Fucking _fuck_.

Ren’s such an idiot, with his datapad and holoproj practically _beaconing_ their location.

A fresh burst of adrenaline propels Hux’s legs over the side of the bunk. He steadies himself briefly against the wall and winces at the stab of pain when he bends his torso to stand upright. The room spins, but he manages to fumble to the chair and shrug his greatcoat on over his bare chest, to stumble through a short corridor into the cockpit.

Hyperspace streaks by out the viewport, stars scarring white across the infinite nothingness. Ren, from the pilot’s chair, blinks out at it, wearing a distant expression and gnawing a ration bar of his own.

“Give me your datapad.” Hux sounds embarrassingly winded, and his chest heaves even from the short exertion. Despite the painkiller, his side throbs with the burst of movement.

Ren turns, gaze darkening. “What the hell are you doing up? You’re in no state to--”

Hux ignores him, crossing the short expanse of floor to lean against the console. He holds out his hand. “Is your holoproj connected to it? I can’t believe you left it on the network. I mean, I certainly can believe it, but this is truly thoughtless, I--”

“You’re babbling,” Ren says, and there’s condemnation in it. He sets down his bar and grips the arms of his seat as if to stand. “Don’t make me take you back there myself.”

Hux holds his ground. Ren doesn’t get it. “You didn’t answer the question. Are you or are you not still connected to the Order HoloNet?”

“You didn’t fucking _ask_ that--” Ren starts.

Hux’s gaze flits to the expanse of console in front of Ren, and there it is: the thin sliver of his datapad, a durasteel-cased red flag. Hux leans across Ren and grabs it, even as Ren grips his arm.

“What the _fuck,_ Hux? What are you doing?” Ren tries to wrangle the device out of his grasp, or wrangle him inert, but Hux pivots, quickly swiping into the datapad with his highest-security passcode and his thumbprint.

It takes all of two seconds to disconnect the datapad. The three blue bars denoting signal strength flicker out one by one, and Hux proffers Ren the device.

“Would it have taken that much critical thought to do that yourself?” he asks, acidly.

Ren snatches the datapad back, but makes no move to power it up or reverse Hux’s disconnect. “I had to get information somehow,” he says, bristling.

“At the risk of disclosing our location?” Hux raises his eyebrows, then turns, casting his gaze across the controls. He doesn’t give Ren the chance to answer. “What about the tracker on the ship’s drive?”

“I disabled it.”

Hux doubts it. He won’t leave this up to Ren. Ren’s going to get them killed because he thinks with his heart and his Force and his dick, and not his perfectly capable brain, and Hux can’t stand it. He won’t stand by and let it happen, he can’t, he _won’t_.

“We’ll see about that,” he tells Ren.

His breathing is coming sharper as he bends over the console and swipes into the ships’ navicomputer. A few taps take him to its tracking data. _Visibility:_ it reads, _CLOAKED._

“You didn’t,” he all but pants, without taking his eyes from the screen. “You’ve only cloaked it. It won’t show up on external scanners, but they’ll be able to see it once they’re into the internal networks.” He presses his thumb to a bioscanner before entering the codes that cut the _Lambda_ -class entirely off the Order’s grid. “You should have known this.”

“I do know it!” Ren’s stood now, peering over Hux’s shoulder.

Hux wheels to face him, and notices his hands are still shaking. His eyes only look redder.  “So what was the issue? You just weren’t paying attention? It would have gotten us found or worse.”

“Forgive me for having more imminent concerns,” Ren spits back.

“Such as?”

Ren gives him a long look, then runs a hand through his hair. “I was,” he says, slower and icier than he ought, “drawing on the Force.”

As if that weren’t obvious from his strung-out appearance.

( _For you,_ goes unsaid. _To save you.)_

Hux lowers his eyes, but manages a caustic reply, “Because that’s _always_ been an ample excuse for negligence.” His gaze falls to the gauges on the pilot’s side of the console. Fuel supply is showing under 15%--flashing red.  

“Fuck, Ren.” He looks back up and gestures to it. “How long have we been out here?”

“About twelve standard hours.”

“‘Twelve standard hours,’” Hux echoes, with the ghost of a sneer. “Twelve standard hours, and we’re down to thirteen percent fuel. You honestly commandeered a shuttle with a fraction of its fuel capacity?” Hux throws a glance toward the low ceiling. “And a _Lambda_ -class at that--could it _get_ much more obviously Order than an upgraded Imperial model? For fuck’s sake--”

“What would you have rather had, a fucking _Upsilon_ -class?” Ren retorts, louder now. “They’d see that coming a parsec out.”

He has a point, but Hux won’t acknowledge it. He doesn’t bother asking why not an escape pod--those are single-occupant, with no space to tend to a blaster wound. Hux clears his throat, does his best not to look chastened. He didn’t ask for Ren’s help.

“What about the fuel?” he persists.

“So I was supposed to carry you from shuttle to shuttle, checking all the fuel gauges with the Resistance breaking in?”

Hux’s face burns. “It wouldn’t have been an unreasonable course of action.”

“Would you have done any better?” Ren says, voice pitching into something like a bark. He’s doing his best to loom over Hux again, but he still lacks his usual presence.

Hux represses the overwhelming urge to brush aside the hair clinging to Ren’s face--to fix something else--and ignores the fact that in Ren’s position he would have likely chosen the escape pod. _Focus._ The argument can wait--there _is_ a crisis at hand.

“Did you at least have a destination in mind?” is what he says, prim and controlled.

“Wild Space.”

Hux sighs. “That’s a start.”

Ren looks at him for a moment, that gods-awful rifle scope expression from the bunk hours ago, and from every other time he’s looked for weaknesses. Then he nods to the co-pilot’s seat in front of Hux. “You should sit down.”

“So should you.”

Ren’s apparently had the time to get the saber-soot off his face, but none of his color has returned. He all but collapses back into the captain’s seat and swings up his right leg, ankle resting on his left knee. Gray-white powder dusts the black toe. Ash.

Something cold threads its way through Hux’s stomach at the observation, makes it easy to follow Ren’s suit, sink into the worn synthleather of the co-pilot’s seat. He pivots the chair vaguely in Ren’s direction, but hunches over the navicomputer screen between them. The shuttle still has all of its saved charts and data, as well as its internal positioning system--they’re rogue, not flying blind.

“Here we are,” he says, tapping the black between the blue motes marking the Seswenna and Nikto systems. “More or less.”

“I know,” Ren replies acidly, but he still swivels toward Hux to study the screen.

Hux hmms and scans the screen-tags on nearby systems. Three are unfamiliar, and therefore their best bets. “About how much fuel do you estimate we’ve burned?”

“The first time I looked at it, we were at twenty percent.” The first level at which it’s programmed to start flashing. Thank fuck for the alert system.

“Which was _when_?”

“I don’t know!” Ren retorts, and his eyes flash briefly. Then he appears to gather himself, catching his breath. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “Maybe an hour in, so we’ve got what, another eight hours?”

Hux mentally runs the figures, and Ren’s math checks out. “Yes,” he admits. “Eight and a half if we stretch it, but we ought not press it beyond six.”

“Anywhere suitable within six hours then?” Ren doesn’t wait for Hux’s answer, instead taps on the six nearest worlds. Four are over eight hours off, and of the two remaining, Daro is the only one with spaceports.

“‘ _No data_ ,’” Ren reads, having tapped on the readout for the world’s full profile.

“There was a clandestine investigation years ago,” Hux supplies. He had no direct involvement, but he read the reports. “Final assessment was that they had little to offer us, and couldn’t benefit from an Order presence. Low priority.”

“And nobody ever got around to it,” Ren says, looking up. “Fortunate.”

Hux reaches over, pinches to close the blank profile. Without asking for permission, he sets their course for Daro. Ren nods as if he did, then looks up at the viewport again, blankly. Silence stretches for a moment, so heavy Hux can hardly stand it.

“It’s a highly insular world,” Hux begins to explain, babbling with an energy that feels nervous, even to him. He scrabbles for information to share because knowledge is power, is control.

He tells Ren about the largest economic sector (subsistence agriculture), and how it’s produced a successful intraplanetary trade system due to the diversity of climates and crops. He mentions the language, the religion, anything that comes to mind from a ten-year-old assessment.

Ren looks straight ahead, nodding occasionally. Twice he runs his hand through his hair. His right ankle still rests on his left knee, and he’s taken his lightsaber off his belt to fidget with it, tossing it idly from hand to hand.

The navicomputer database at least lists the major towns and the spaceport codes. They must be fairly rustic, low-traffic affairs (at which newcomers will stick out acutely), but there’s little choice to be had.

“Once we land,” Hux goes on, “the first step we’ll need to take is to--”

“Get a stiff fucking drink,” Ren says, nearly a murmur, speaking more to his boot than to Hux.

He doesn’t so much as glance at Hux, much less crack a smile, but something about the absurdity of it--of him, of all of this--startles a laugh out of Hux. _This_ has always been the most alarming of Ren’s powers. (It’s easy to forget.)

Hux almost manages to stiffen his upper lip. “I’d prefer not to cloud my mental faculties during this crisis, thank you.”

“Says the man planning his flight from justice while buzzed on symoxin.”

“Says the man going along with me.”

For some reason, Ren smiles at that--a real smile, with teeth, not his usual mildly-pleased quirk of the lip. He shakes his head and looks at his lap.

Time falls away in the silence that follows, while Ren’s smile fades. This could be six years ago on the bridge, swapping jibes through the vocoder; three years ago in Ren’s bed, over illicit liqueurs. Ren’s hair falls in his face, obscuring his expression, and for a moment, Hux _wants._

Ren looks up again, then back over at Hux. “Ditch the ship,” he says, almost breezily. “That’s the first step.”

After all, he’s a mindreader.

\--oOo--

 

Ditching the ship, as it happens, proves deceptively easy after landing in Daro’s second-largest spaceport. Ten minutes after the initial anxiety of actually deboarding, Hux finds himself shivering under two high white suns, not quite at ease, but at least less than panicked. Certainly not immediately fearing for his life.

He’s more or less standing guard while Ren and his Force convince the spaceport’s lone customs agent that they’re livestock tradesmen from a neighboring system, that the Lambda-class will be gone before nightfall, and that there’s no need to bother with checking their certs. None of these things are true, but all of it worked on the traffic controller who hailed them before they entered atmo.

Ren flicks his wrist, speaks low and confident, stands straight despite the fatigue lingering around his eyes. He’s magnetic, of course, with his gloves off and a breeze teasing his hair, every word deliberate. Sometimes, he hadn’t been a half-bad Supreme Leader.

Hux tears his gaze away, adjusting the straps of his rucksack, then the command cap from which he inelegantly sheared the Order’s insignia, and now is wearing, earflaps down against both recognition and the suns. It’s got to look as absurd as it feels, but logic demands that the local techs and pilots are merely staring at the unfamiliar shuttle.

They’ve made no move to detain Hux and Ren on behalf the Republic, nor has anyone overtly jeered at the odd couple they make. They’d be well within their rights, however: Ren, striking, in his usual tunic and jodhpurs, the lightsaber concealed, civilian enough not to turns heads; Hux, unsteady despite a fresh bacta patch and the SE-44C pistol in his waistband, uniform from there down but wearing an unmarked Stromtrooper undershirt in lieu of his ruined tunic. It isn’t quite enough against the wind.

“Come on,” Ren says, once the customs agent--a blue-skinned and thickly tattooed Zabrak--has blankly nodded them past. He looks Hux up and down, and Hux pulls the cap down against another gust, before starting to walk.

“And how long before they come to their senses?” Hux asks, jerking his head back toward the Zabrak once out of earshot.  
  
“At least until we reach Daro City.”

Satisfactory. (Impressive, even.) Hux merely nods. He stares down the tarmac, still alert, absorbing every detail against both anxiety and surprise attack.

The rows of parked ships to either side match what Hux knows of Daro: most of them battered and rusty, with peeling paint and undercarriages leaking fuel onto the asphalt. Any of them would probably disintegrate upon breaking atmo. The Lambda-class is by far the most modern vessel on the lot--it’ll make a hell of a find for the local that scavenges it.

Hux and Ren should be well clear of the planet itself by the time they find the trash compactor’s suspicious contents: one hat-sized and half-unraveled sunburst-insignia; two third-gen Order datapads, gutted by a lightsaber; one unnecessary black cloak; one sturdy belt equipped with a grossly sentimental biotracker; and one well-loved but eye-catching greatcoat, sleeves complete with now-irrelevant General’s stripes.

\--oOo--

 

Around an hour later, Hux watches the province’s sprawling pear orchards roll past below a rickety sublight passenger shuttle that must predate the Empire.  They caught it at the spaceport’s forlorn intraplanetary transport hub, and have recently reached maximum cruising altitude, which isn’t saying much.

Seated in the shuttle’s rearmost quad of seats, Hux is pressed between Ren’s thigh and the viewport. The scenery isn’t terribly impressive, but it’s helping him avoid eye contact with the squirming young Twi’lek seated facing him.

Below, ground-crawling harvesters cut gridlines between the trees, great rusty arms vacuuming fruit into tarpaulin bins, sending ripples through the boughs before and behind. The machine leaves each tree still green, and next year they’ll be in blossom again, and life will go on.  

That _stings_ somehow, the knowledge that the Order has fallen, yet no constellations have gone dark; no worlds have stopped turning, nor suns imploded. The pears falls into the bin, and the harvest goes on, and the universe keeps expanding. The suns will rise tomorrow, and spring will come to Daro in a few months’ time.

The galaxy should _know_ somehow. There should have been a ripple in Ren’s Force, or something. Anything signifying the turn of the balance, and of the tide. It hasn’t happened, though, at least not here.

It’s unnerving. The two most wanted war criminals in the galaxy are tucked onto a bucket of bolts somewhere between spaces Wild and Unknown, and everyone is _ignoring_ them. (For the first time, at least, in Hux’s life.) The anonymity is a relief, of course, but it will take some getting used to.

Being no one is a twisted sort of punishment, all its own.

The shuttle has passed out of the current orchard, its shadow falling across a field of white wildflowers, when Hux becomes aware of a warm weight on his shoulder, the brush of hair against his temple. He startles slightly, and turns, jostling the dead weight of Ren’s nodding head, the press of his shoulder against Hux’s. His breathing comes soft and even; he’s slumped at such an angle that it’s close to Hux’s ear.

It’s hardly the first time Ren has fallen asleep on top of him, but every prior instance has been in a bed. After sex. Over two years ago. Now is hardly the time or place to resume the custom (now, after everything). Hux jostles his elbow past Ren’s limp arm and jabs him in the ribs. Once, twice. He doesn’t stir, doesn’t so much as mumble in his sleep.

For fuck’s sake. The seat is narrow enough that Hux can’t lean away and let Ren’s head drop until he jolts awake. He’ll just have to shrug him off. He would, if he were able. He could, if he hadn’t already cut his eyes toward Ren’s face.

The lines of tension are gone; some of his color has even begun to return, so the scar looks less angry. The moles, however, remain just as pronounced. His eyelids twitch, dark eyelashes quivering above his skin, and the afternoon sunlight from the viewport casts his hair deepest brown.

Moreover, he looks peaceful. He sat like a livewire through the boarding process and the first portion of the trip, every fiber of him on edge, jaw set and eyes darting. He’d looked ready to quarter anyone who so much looked askance at him, much less recognized him as a public enemy.

_“Can you,”_ Hux had asked, through gritted teeth, _“at least try to be less conspicuous?”_ Ren had scoffed, asked if Hux _really wanted_ him to let his guard down. Hux had had no answer, but Ren had relaxed thereafter, just slightly. Apparently, he’s now relaxed entirely.

And Hux, well-- Hux needs him well-rested and at peak performance. (Never mind that he deserves the break.) Hux glances over him again, fights back the primal, time-bending urge to brush the hair out of his face or kiss the crown of his head.

Hux has resolved to turn back to the pear harvest when a shrill voice pipes up from in front of him. “He’s ‘sleep.”

Hux turns to face the Twi’lek girl sitting across from him. She’s bouncing one leg, and her green headtails rest in front of her shoulders. _No shit_ , Hux would reply, but she looks approximately five.

“Yes,” he says instead, and tries to look out the viewport. The kid calls his attention back.

“So’s my sister.” She jerks her head toward the adolescent xeno beside her, her skin an identical livid green. The younger girl looks despondent, frowning at her feet and swinging them. “She’s boring.”

Hux smiles despite himself, and _fuck it._ Kylo fucking Ren is asleep on his shoulder, the Order is over, and the kid is--at least a distraction. “She’s smart,” he returns. “She won’t be tired later.”

“No, she just went on a shuttle last year, too,” the girl chirps, then crinkles her nose. “She doesn’t think it’s fun now.”

There are several incomplete pieces of information in the girl’s response, several possible lines of inquiry, if Hux wants to keep this up. It’s either this or stare out the viewport, drowning in self-pity. “So this is your first time on a shuttle?”

“Yeah.” The girl sits up straighter, puffing out her chest the tiniest bit. “Last year I went in the landspeeder with Ma and Dad, but this year I’m big enough to fly with Sarri ahead of time.” She nods to her sister, apparently Sarri.

“Oh,” Hux says, unsure if he cares enough to ask where they’re headed. Before he’s decided, she volunteers it.

“We help Mam and Paps bring in the pears every year.” The girl’s eye widen, and she goes on solemnly, “They need a lot of help because they’ve got the biggest orchard _ever._ ”

Her serious, proud expression wrings something like a smile out of Hux. “‘The biggest orchard ever?’” he echoes. “That’s saying quite a lot.”

“It’s gi _gan_ tic,” the girl confirms, “and the harvest is really fun.”

“It sounds like it,” Hux says, mildly. He could ask what city it’s in, to find out if he’ll be making conversation all the way to Daro City, but he’ll experiment with letting it die.

“Yeah,” says the girl, and a minute of silence falls between them. Hux turns back to the viewport, the girl’s bouncing calf a green blur in his periphery. She breaks the quiet soon enough.

“What’s your name?” she chirps, and Hux whirls back to her before he can fully register the gravity of the question, or his own ill-preparedness to answer it. “I’m Tayya.”

“I’m--” Hux starts, and _fuck_. Ren was supposed to be awake to provide the cover stories, or at least to convince any inquisitive locals that there was no need for one. It was a stupid move, as Hux can’t for the life of him think of an alias. He needs something, anything, fast, before it looks odd that he doesn’t know his own name. “Tidge,” finally falls out, and it’s inadequate, all but transparent, but it will have to do.

“Tidge,” Tayya repeats, and Hux half-expects her to tell him it’s funny-sounding. She doesn’t, though, perhaps young enough that everything new sounds strange, and therefore nothing at all truly registers as unusual. She ponders the syllable for a moment, then nods at Ren, whose head is still leaden above Hux’s shoulder. “What about him?”

“Ben,” Hux shoots back, before he can think, and _fuck_.

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck_ **fuck** . It isn’t as if he could have come up with anything more natural. He’s fully aware that none of Ren’s names lend themselves to a sobriquet. Still, Hux knows he’s an idiot, that this is the end, that Tayya is going to say _Ben? Like Ben Solo? The guy who used to be a Jedi knight?_ It’s all going to be over.

But the girl... _doesn’t_. She studies Ren for a second, then turns her gaze back to Hux and repeats the name with the same mild interest that she gave to Hux’s own response. There’s no spark of recognition in her eyes, no awe or fear or surprise. She’s young, but the Skywalker-Solo-Organa clan are household names, legends. Bedtime stories. She doesn’t know them.

“Cool,” she says, and Hux inhales shakily, forcing his muscles to relax. His hand, he realizes, has gone toward the holster in his waistband of its own accord. He wills it back to the armrest as Tayya’s stream of chatter starts up again.

Over the ninety minutes that follow, he gets a convoluted but detailed history of the family pear orchard, which doesn’t sound like a terribly large-scale affair after all, given that they apparently hire migrant workers to pick the fruit, rather than machine harvesting it. It turns out that the farm is about an hour’s ground ride from the spaceport in Dreyville, the shuttle’s next stop.

The chattiness is almost cute, if a bit exhausting. It’s unfamiliar to Hux, at any rate, as such a trait is the first thing beaten out of young troopers and cadets. It’s harmless here, though, no threat to the fighting force, and he indulges her. Employing the laser-focus borne of decades of mental compartmentalization, he manages to think of little else.

Eventually, the pilot’s voice crackles over the intercom, announcing arrival in twenty minutes. Tayya barely pauses to listen, but once the transport begins banking downward in earnest, she falters, peering wide-eyed out the viewport. As the shuttle lurches slightly, she grips the armrests. Her small fingers hardly fit around them.

“Are- are we gonna crash?” she says, without tearing her eyes from the transparisteel.

Hux doesn’t remember his own first shuttle ride, but it may have been harrowing. “Of course not,” he says, in the gentle tone he’s reserved for two categories of people: younglings, and--long ago--Ren. “We’re just landing.”

“Okay,” Tayya stammers, but doesn’t relax. The shuttle stutters downward again, the ground below rising to meet its wings. The girl stiffens, eyes suddenly watering. “Are you sure?” she asks, voice breaking. “It looks-- it’s really--”

Well, she can’t melt down on his watch.

“Tayya,” Hux says, “look at me.” Tayya does, wordlessly. “Do you know how old I am?”

Tayya shakes her head, ends of her headtails flopping slightly.

“I’m thirty-five.”

Her eyes widen at that, and she echoes him in a choked sort of whisper: “ _Thirty-five?”_

It occurs to Hux that he may very well be older than her parents, and his age suddenly weighs on him, heavier than it ever has. Thirty-five is young for a general (or a Grand Marshal), but old for a runaway. He shakes off the thought.

“Yes,” he replies, refocusing, “I’m quite old. But do you know what?”

Tayya’s brows pinch together. “What?”

“I’ve ridden on shuttles just like this one many times, every single year, and they’ve all landed exactly like this one.” It isn’t strictly true--this transport has none of the smoothness of an _Upsilon_ or even a _Lambda_ -class, but never mind that. “Do you know how many times I’ve crashed, out of all those hundreds of rides?”

“Not a lot?” the girl hazards, even as the shuttle lurches again.

“None,” Hux replies, hiding a wince as the sudden motion jars his wound, “and I can tell this one isn’t any different.”

“Okay,” Tayya says.

She’s quiet but calm for the rest of the ride, even as the shuttle touches down with a profound shudder. The motion jars Ren’s head against Hux’s temple, and Ren sits straight up, eyelids flying open. His gaze darts back and forth across the rows of stirring passengers, wild and disoriented. His hand strays toward his saber.

“We made it!” Tayya squeals, looking back and forth from Hux to her sister, Sarri, who’s stretching.

“What did I tell you?” Hux says, and gives her the best smile he can summon. Tayya beams back.

In Hux’s periphery, Ren looks back and forth between Hux and the girl. Hux places a calming hand on his wrist, and meets his eyes, trying his best to think _She’s harmless_ into Ren’s head. It seems to work. Ren relaxes under Hux’s touch, and his gaze clouds over, intensity replaced by weariness, for all he’s just woken up. He purses his lips, shoots a final gaze up and down the crowded aisle, and looks back at Hux.

“Where are we?”

Hux withdraws his hand before responding, “Purgos. First stop.”

“All right.”

Ren sits calmly as those passengers exiting at this leg of the flight disembark, and the Twi’lek girls eventually rise to follow. With help from an attendant, Sarri grabs their bags from the overhead bin, and Tayya throws a grin and a wave over her shoulder before following her sister.

“Bye, Tidge!” she says, then turns to Ren. “Bye, Ben!”

Ren flinches visibly, all the rigidity he just lost rushing back into his frame at full force. It’s like watching a man freeze to death outside an airlock.

“Goodbye, Tayya,” Hux manages as she walks off, before Ren grabs his shoulder.

“What the _fuck_ did that kid just call me?” he hisses.

Hux’s face heats up, and he swallows, but tries to maintain his composure. “She asked,” he starts. “I-- Nothing else was coming to me. You were supposed to be awake to fend off--”

“You couldn’t just think of a random name?” Ren interrupts. There’s a quiver in his voice, Hux realizes, but it’s the unsteadiness of fear, not the groundquake of anger. “She’ll have the authorities in here in minutes. What were you thinking--”

Hux cuts him off this time. “She didn’t recognize it,” he says, quietly, evenly. “She’s like the rest of the planet. That name doesn’t mean a damn thing to her.”

Ren’s lips part briefly, and his gaze roams Hux’s face, as if running a calculation and reaching an indeterminate sum. “But shouldn’t it?”

“Do you _mind_ being able to hide?” Hux retorts, inflecting iciness, though he knows exactly what Ren means.

“No,” Ren replies, “no, I’m glad it’s working, it’s just--” He falters, and something dark and sorrowful glimmers in his eyes.

“Strange,” Hux supplies.

“Yeah,” Ren says, and leans back against the headrest. His voice drops, yet he looks at the ceiling. “Being nothing.”

Hux couldn’t comfort him if he wanted to.

\--oOo--

 

A few new passengers board for the second leg of the trip, and the transport soon lifts off again, flying parallel to the setting suns. Long shadows fall across the orchards, and they boast notably less motion. Rusty harvester machines sit neglected, looking in the dying light like the shed skeletons of monstrous insects.

Eventually, Ren nods off again. He doesn’t fall onto Hux this time, just bobs against his own chest, hair completely obscuring his profile. Hux watches the orchards turn into wheat fields below the shuttle until a voice over the intercom announces they’ll land in an hour, and will be distributing complimentary beverages.

Hux peels his gaze from the viewport in time to watch an attendant’s cart trundle down the aisle, stop beside his and Ren’s seat, her voice offer him, “Tea or caf?”

Hux wants tea.

“Gray or green?” the attendant replies, brandishing packets in the respective colors.

He’d sooner choke. “Caf,” he says, and throws a glance at Ren, still fast asleep. It’s uncharacteristic--he’s usually an unnervingly light sleeper, or used to be, but he’s apparently dead tired. “Two cafs,” Hux amends, nodding toward Ren.

The attendant pours two flimsi cups and passes them over, offers Hux milk-powder packets and real sugar once he’s pulled down the tray in front of him. He sets his own cup aside, and stirs two sugars and one pack of the powder into Ren’s. He probably still takes it like he used.

The caf smelled weak to begin with, and after Hux’s ministrations, it’s now positively saccharine. Too late to worry about it.

Hux elbows Ren, not daring to say his name to startle him awake, until his head jerks up. Once more, his hand strays instinctively to the saber concealed at his hip, eyes darting with that hunted expression.

Hux risks touching Ren’s forearm again, and Ren relaxes somewhat. Hux proffers the caf with his other hand. “They brought this,” he says. “You need it.”

Ren does, which is why Hux bothered fixing it for him. He can’t be stealing ships and pulling mind tricks half-groggy.

Ren eyes the cup, gnawing his lip for a second, before accepting it. He raises it to his lips, but pauses. “Does it have sug--”

“It came with it,” Hux interrupts, in a sudden mindless rush to conceal the bizarre intimacy of fixing Ren’s caf. (Of knowing how he likes it.)

But Ren’s gaze drops to the tray, to the torn flimsi packets scattered across it. He says nothing, just raises his eloquent eyebrows. Infuriatingly, his lips quirk upward before he takes a sip.

Hux nurses his own black caf as they rehash the plan in whispers, circumlocuting around the illegal bits for the benefit of any open ears. It’s simple, really--civilian clothes, hot food, junked and untraceable ship, fuel if necessary.

“We should still clear the planet by zero hundred hours,” Hux says, as the shuttle begins lurching downward.

“Can’t wait,” Ren says, obnoxiously dismissive. Strangely, though, no snide remark about stating the obvious follows. There’s a softness to Ren’s tone that unsettles Hux--if he didn’t know better, he’d place it somewhere between _teasing_ and _fond_.

\--oOo--

 

After an uneventful landing, the first step of the rest of the plan goes smoothly. They use an untraceable credchip left over from Ren’s clandestine days to purchase Daro-appropriate clothing from a cheap stall, then cross the street to refuel at Paradise Diner. After ordering at the counter, they claim a booth and take it in turns to change clothes in the fresher.

Hux is fidgeting with the cuffs of the soft grey tunic he’s still getting used to, when Ren reappears at the end of the table.

“Inconspicuous?” Ren gestures down the length of him to his newly-bought civvies: a simple but tight-fitting tunic in a midnight blue, over a pair of dark-brown jodhpurs.

He looks good, all things considered, and not just where the tunic stretches over his shoulders. The color works, and he appears to have worked on his hair in the fresher. He looks oddly pleased with the supposed disguise. As if anything could render him unremarkable.

“Adequate,” Hux replies, though stunning would be the apter term. He nods to the other side of the booth, hoping the diner’s natural lighting will hide his flush. Ren slides in onto creaking synthleather, and eyes the blinking pager between his own glass of daelfruit juice and Hux’s ice water.

Ren’s hardly sat down when the pager buzzes, flashing an excited red and vibrating against the plast tabletop. Hux reaches for it, half-standing, but Ren grabs it first.

“I’ve got it,” he says. “You need to save your strength.”

Which is bullshit, of course--despite the walking, Hux’s side is little worse than it was, a dull ache thrumming in the back of his consciousness. But Ren’s gone before he can argue.

Hux watches him cross the restaurant, taking in the sparsely-populated tables and low hum of conversation, the way the skylights throw the waning sunlight across the room in pale-yellow patches.

Ren returns quickly, and sets a tray bearing two nerf and jandarra rice bowls, flimsi napkins, and plast utensils on the table. Hux thanks him sullenly, and pulls his food off the tray. He hasn’t eaten since the _Lambda_ -class, and hasn’t thought he was hungry, but his appetite returns at the aroma of spices rising from the roasted meat and thick orange sauce. He tucks in, and doesn’t look up at Ren until he hears his voice.

“This isn’t too bad.” Ren peers at him over the rim of his glass, deep purple liquid sloshing as he sets it back down.

Hux swallows his bite. “The juice?”

“That, yeah, but really all of it. The clothes. The food.” He gives Hux a long, searching look ( _target acquired_ ). “The company.”

Hux scoffs. Ren is ridiculous. He’s fucking ridiculous. What’s he trying to do, _chat up_ his former subordinate when they’re running for their lives? He doesn’t deserve what he thinks he’s earned.

“Do you think this is some sort of date?” he shoots back, caustically.

“No.” Ren spears a chunk of roast nerf without breaking eye contact.

“I’m glad we can agree on that,” Hux replies, with a mirthless smile, “as being abducted from my own ship while unconscious does not qualify as interest.”

Ren chews thoughtfully, swallows. His gaze flits down for a moment, and his lips curve slightly upward, something like mocking. “But you did make me caf on the shuttle.”  
  
_Idiot, you should have known._ Hux should have known Ren wouldn’t get past the empty sugar packets on Hux’s tray. “I _made you caf_ because I know what you’re like when you haven’t had it.”

Ren snorts, then smiles at his rice again, the soft, slow, toothy kind that broke Hux, once. There’s a lock of hair in front of his eyes. “I suppose going caf-less isn’t the best for staying alert on the run.”

“The worst, in fact,” Hux can’t help but reply, more lightly than he should. He returns to his own bowl; he’s nearing the bottom now.

“So thank you,” Ren says, almost belatedly. Hux glances back up again, and he’s holding his fork over his bowl, studying Hux, something almost expectant in his look. Something entitled.

_You need to set this straight._

Hux sets down his own fork and meets Ren’s eyes, doing his best to maintain levity while still getting his point across. “Is this the part where I say, _it’s the least I could do after you saved my life_?”

Ren wets his lips. “It could be.”

He lowers his eyes, and without pausing, takes Hux’s hand on the tabletop. His fingers are a bit rough, and unbearably warm.

He runs his too-big thumb over Hux’s knuckles as he speaks, and the motion mesmerizes Hux into silence. Ren’s grip is just loose enough, and more familiar than the clothes on his back.

It could be six years ago in bed, those same fingers playing with his own, caressing them one by one, Hux’s back to Ren’s chest and Ren’s arm around him. (Ren murmuring _I love you_ because Hux was pretending to sleep.)

But it could also be six months ago--those same fingers curled bruise-tight around Hux’s wrist, the hoarse command as Hux swung his legs over the side of the mattress: _“You_ aren’t _leaving_.”

Or it could be six months before that--those hands wounding his body and his pride and the ghost of what was certainly never love, without even deigning to touch him.

Hux shook Ren’s hand off after that, six months ago, and he does it again now.

Hux pops his lips, and begins collecting the flimsi and plast rubbish onto the tray.

“We need to go,” he says, quietly. “We’ve been sitting here too long.” He snags Ren’s bowl last and slides to the edge of the booth. He plants his feet and stands. Too quickly.

The room tilts, and his vision tunnels, black blurs gnawing at the edges. His wound aches, throbs, flaring back to the fore of his consciousness. He fumbles for purchase, and wraps his hand around the edge of the table, waiting for the blood to return to his head.

He registers the sensation of a warm, firm grasp around his bicep before he’s blinked enough to take in Ren’s face. His right hand is wrapped around Hux’s arm, long fingers damn near encircling it entirely. Hux catches the flicker of concern in Ren’s gaze before it hardens.

“I think the symoxin’s wearing off,” Hux offers, more feebly than he’d like. He doesn’t let go of the table, and Ren doesn’t let go of him.

“Are you going to make me hold you up?” There’s heat in Ren’s voice, and it doesn’t match the way he drops his hand, rubbing Hux’s arm before it falls. He bends his own arm at the elbow, an unmistakable offer. _Or will you hold onto me?_

Hux isn’t sure if it’s implicit or spoken directly into his mind. It doesn’t matter. For lack of a better crutch, he wraps his hand just above the crook of Ren’s arm.


	2. Chapter 2

Hux--hasn’t done this before. Walked around _clinging_ to Ren, publicly marking them as together. Theirs--when it existed--had been a hushed thing, dark and urgent and all but unspoken: hands over mouths in empty conference rooms, encrypted messaging channels for filth and sweet nothings, hidden lube and pretenses for late-night debriefs.

The thing--whatever it was--had died in the light of day. It was never meant for it.

Nonetheless, Hux’s hand fits neatly around Ren’s arm, and it’s infinitely better than falling. His side is aching in earnest now, and he lets Ren guide him down the sidewalk and into a crowded market street.

Locals human and alien, laden with parcels and heading home for the evening, jostle against him, even as hawkers still cry their wares. The temperature has dropped further as the suns sink and the shadows lengthen, and the wind has remained steady. It blows the pungent scent of spices through the air, mingling with that of roast meats and stale bread.

Ren looks left, and Hux looks right, in an unspoken agreement to share the work of surveilling for any signs of local authorities, until they reach the station for a transport that will take them to the junkyard on the outskirts of town. No officials of any kind appear. The food market blends into a section for household goods, into one for outright junk.

They’ve been walking for almost an hour, and Hux’s side is throbbing so hard he can feel it in his skull, when Ren nudges him gently.

Hux bites down a hiss of pain at the pressure as Ren murmurs in his ear, “Look left. Two stalls ahead.”

Hux follows Ren’s gaze to a rusty stall boasting an array of what must be weapons-tech, all decades older than Hux has ever seen, much less has used. There are blaster pistols with wires hanging out of them, inexplicably.

“Good to know we’re better armed than the locals,” Hux says, strained by the pain in his side, but still lighter than Ren deserves. He’s surely seen broken-down weapons of this sort on missions before; it’s quaint, but unremarkable.

“No,” Ren replies. “I mean, you’re right, but.” He pauses, suddenly slowing his pace. “Far right rack. Top shelf.”

Hux picks out the spot Ren means, and nearly stops dead. Until he doesn’t. “There are other types of white plastoid armor,” he says, though his voice falters. The pieces in question are a breastplate and two vambraces, labeled _Shields_ and streaked with rust-brown stains.

“It looks like--” Ren starts.

“It isn’t,” Hux replies, tersely. He picks up their pace, though the pain flares. He grits his teeth against it. “And if it is, what of it? We still aren’t--” He inhales sharply to step onto a higher curb. “--turning any heads.”

Ren gnaws his lip for a second before agreeing.

Over the next few blocks, Hux’s pain flares from a throbbing ache to an acute burning. With each step, he can feel the bolt searing through his skin again, sending shockwaves of ion-heat through his entire left side. His head pounds, and the bustle of the market melts into background noise: he hears little but his own ragged inhales and exhales.

It shouldn’t be much further to the shuttle stop, but their pace is slowing. When Hux entirely misses a step down and staggers off another curb, instinctively clutching at Ren, they stop altogether, under the awning of a closed caf cart. Hux leans against the wall, without letting go of Ren, and Ren’s hand moves up to cover Hux’s on his own arm.

Hux simply breathes for a few moments, taking in the twilight.

“Can you keep going?” Ren says, after Hux’s breathing has regulated somewhat.

Hux coughs before finding words. “Of course.”

Ren, who’s still standing more or less straight, looks down at him with something distinctly like concern. “We should have changed your patch at the diner.” His left hand moves from Hux’s to his own hair.

“It would have taken too long.” Hux shakes his head. Besides, he would have had to be flat on his back to do it properly.  “I’ll do it on the ship.”

There’s something unmistakably tender in Ren’s expression as he looks back at Hux, and it warms something frozen in Hux’s chest. “ _I_ ’ll do it on the ship,” he says, with a possessive air.

Hux doesn’t acknowledge him--he’s willing to save this argument for once they’ve cleared Darian air space. “Let’s keep moving.”

For the last few blocks, they maintain a steady pace. Ren’s left hand finds its way onto Hux’s again, rubbing idly across his knuckles. He so obviously and aggressively gives a fuck about Hux. It’s almost flattering. But more significantly, telling him to stop will only slow things down again. Hux, therefore, allows it.

 

* * *

 

By the time the transport arrives, the suns have sunk fully below the horizon, bathing increasingly dilapidated city streets in a soft violet light. It’s a long-ish ride. Quiet. The buildings get shabbier, and the fellow passengers less human.

Ren nods off once, but Hux shakes him awake with a muted, _“Hey.”_ He looks so disappointed to have woken up that Hux apologizes. What he doesn’t say is that he needs him (awake and alert).

The stars are out when the transport reaches its last stop, six blocks west of the junkyard, according to the pilot.

Ren offers Hux his arm, and they start walking.

 

* * *

 

The street is dark and desolate, all dingy, buzzing streetlamps shining on boarded-up windows and broken glass, with the exception of a rundown motel with a neon yellow VACANCY sign blinking fitfully in the window. A few speeders are parked on the street outside it, and Hux hurries Ren past.

The sidewalk itself hasn’t been repaved in decades: weeds stick up from crags in the duracrete, and it’s often uneven. There are few passers-by, though there’s noise from the surrounding streets: canids barking, the occasional shout.

There’s nothing here more terrifying than Ren or even himself, but the sounds nevertheless set Hux on edge. He actually flinches when the unmistakable whine of a blaster bolt cuts through the air, coming from the street to their right. Ren’s gaze darts toward it, but it’s another few minutes of silence before he turns to Hux.

“Stay close to me,” he says, low and terse.

Hux has let go of his arm, his wound somewhat calmed by the ride, but he edges closer to Ren now. “What?” he says, affecting forbearance.

“I sense--” Ren starts.

“I’m sure there are any number of horrors going on in this neighborhood,” Hux retorts, dismissing him. He just wants Hux to touch him again, but right now it isn’t strictly necessary.

Ren’s voice loses none of its gravity. “Stay _close_ to me.”

A cold, almost frightened current runs under the words, and it settles uncomfortably in Hux’s gut. Wordlessly, he wraps his left hand around Ren’s arm again, and loosens his blaster in its holster.

It’s another block before they reach the first real sign of life they’ve seen on this street itself: a cluster of black-clad humans emerge from an alley a few yards ahead. They disperse themselves across the sidewalk along a streetlamp’s beam. At first they appear to be standing in place, loitering, but it soon becomes clear that they’re advancing toward Hux and Ren.

“ _Shit_ ,” Hux murmurs, though they’re likely just a gang of local adolescent derelicts, possibly even strung out on spice.

Still, Hux doesn’t need this, not now. He nudges Ren--whose muscles have gone suddenly tense under Hux’s hand--toward the edge of the sidewalk to go around them. They’re less than a meter from the group of ten, preparing to pass them by, when one of the crowd shouts the two words that freeze Hux’s blood.

“Hey, General.”

_Fuck._ This can’t have happened. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not when they’re so fucking close. Hux’s breath hitches in his throat, and Ren tenses in his grasp, turning toward the sound.

Hux has enough presence of mind to hiss, “ _Don’t_ ” at Ren. Acknowledging it will mean they’ve lost already. They have to keep moving, have to ignore it, have to go quickly yet not so quickly it looks suspicious, have to--

“General Hux!”

A different voice this time. Hux digs his fingers into Ren’s arm, not so much leaning on him now as holding him back. Hux nudges him further left, to veer into the street if necessary. Too late.

“General Armitage Hux, we know it’s you.”

The group has already encircled them, blocking them in under a flickering streetlamp. As they raise blasters, Hux drops Ren’s arm, allowing Ren to stand behind him, putting them back to back.

Hux’s pulse hammers madly against his ribs, and his wound throbs, rendering him breathless and somewhat dizzy. For that reason, it takes him an extra second to recognize the black cortosis-weave of the gang’s tight-fitting attire--identical to the undershirt wadded in his rucksack. The weapons, too, are familiar--cuffed and scraped but still gleaming white. Sonn-Blas F-11D blaster rifles. Standard issue for Stormtroopers.

The sidewalk is spinning under his feet, and this can’t possibly be happening.

“Hands up,” says one of the troopers, stepping forward and wholly into the light. Hux nudges Ren to comply. They’re badly outnumbered, and it’ll be far cleaner if they can talk their way out of this.

Hux spreads his hands, piecing this shitstorm together even as he readies a cover story. The trooper who advanced--clearly a former captain--doesn’t give him the chance.

“Didn’t expect to see you out this way,” he says. “Guess you had farther to run than we did.”

Okay.

Okay.

They must have been posted at a garrison on the edge of the Outer Rim, then abandoned their stations and fled the planet once orders from on high were cut off. There was no protocol in place for what to do in the event of a total collapse of government, which--Hux now realizes--had been an idiotic move.

But the Order had been going to win. There would always be someone coming to collect any lost troopers. There would always be something for them to go back to. Until yesterday.

Hux clears his throat, and decides not to attempt to pull rank. “You’re mistaken. I’m a local shuttle dealer--”

The captain cuts him off, pacing a few steps so he’s perpendicular to Ren and Hux, can study both their profiles. “We figure there’s a nice price on your head. Maybe we’ll even get amnesty if we bring you in.”

Hux makes to speak up, to argue him down again, when Ren’s voice cuts through the air, low and steady, but with a knife’s edge. In Hux’s periphery he turns his head to meet the captain’s gaze. “This isn’t Armitage Hux.”

Perfect. Hux should have had him speak first. He’ll have them out of this presently.

The captain’s brow scrunches in puzzlement at first, but then he repeats, rather blankly, “This isn’t Armitage Hux.”

He begins lowering his blaster, and Hux sighs, relief relaxing his rigid posture. Thank fuck for Ren and his Force. It’s all he can do not to smile. Not to whirl around and kiss Ren in celebration. But the surge of giddiness passes instantly.

“The hell it isn’t,” calls a second voice, feminine but gruff, from beside the captain. “That’s definitely him. I woke up to a holo of this motherfucker every morning for twenty-five years. I’d know the General anywhere.”

Ren cranes his neck to make eye contact with her, then repeats himself. The momentary chastened look crosses her face too; she echoes Ren’s words back to him. The captain, however, already seems to be recovering: he looks to his men and levels his blaster again, following their lead despite his confused expression.

It was trained into every one of them--total reliance on each other’s cues. It made the Order’s Stormtroopers a seamlessly cohesive and effective military. It made them fearsome adversaries.

“So you hired private security, General?” It’s a third voice, masculine again. A trooper still wearing one of his vambraces takes a step forward, gestures to Ren with his blaster.

Ren bristles at that, deltoids stiffening against Hux’s own. “I’m--” he starts, with thunder in his tone. Hux elbows him to keep quiet before he himself has even fully processed the question.

“Hey, buddy.” It’s the captain’s voice again, and he’s taken a few steps forward to engage with Ren, but not far enough that he’s out of Hux’s line of sight.

_Fuck._ He’s recovered far too quickly--this multi-victim sort of thing must be spreading Ren’s abilities thinly, and he’s already exhausted.

“I don’t know what this guy told you--” The captain jerks the blaster vaguely toward Hux. “--but he’s a wanted man.”

“Yeah,” calls someone from behind Hux, “the Starkiller.”

The tone stings a little, but the nickname itself stiffens Hux’s spine and angles his chin upward. He’s still somebody. Has something. A legacy.

But Ren is still tense, sprung tight against Hux’s back and ready to snap. Hopefully he’ll piece together why they don’t recognize him. Why it’s his own fault.

If these troopers have been stationed this far out for the typical two-year stint, they’d have had no reason to see Supreme Leader Ren. He certainly hadn’t made any public appearances or Order-wide holocasts in his position, nor did his ascent change enough about daily activities out here to make them curious. They haven’t been picking up the _Beacon_ out here to catch the _Wanted_ programming--and Order networks wouldn’t allow it anyway.

They’ve cornered Hux on pure assumption--survivors to the last. Hux would feel prouder of them if they’d lower their blasters and thank him for their training, then let him go rig a junked ship into hyperspace.

“All of you are mistaken.” Ren’s fighting for an even tone, but there’s a tremor eroding it. In Hux’s periphery, his head moves to make eye contact with as many troopers as possible. He’s trying this en masse. “This isn’t Armitage Hux.”

The captain, at least, is unaffected. “Look, man, we used to have your job--security for this guy. We’ve got no beef with you. We’ve gotta take him alive, though.” The captain lowers his gun momentarily, though the rest of the troopers keep theirs leveled.  “Just let us have him, and you can go on your way.”

Ren tenses again, like he’s raring for a fight, but Hux elbows him again, more gently now, less of a nudge even than a rub. He’d take his arm if he could lower his hands without getting shot.

Ren relaxes just slightly, but it’s enough for now. If he’s going to fight his way out of this, it needs to be calculated, not reactionary. Definitely not based on the whimpers of his own wounded pride.

Ren repeats himself, tone pitching upward into something feverish and damn near ineffective. One trooper or another argues him down, and he comes back with a tenser reply. They go back and forth, Ren against one trooper, then other, but the group’s conclusion never falters, and the convinced soldier reverts to the pack before they’ve even begun to recover. This mentality was engineered. (Hux was the engineer.)

Ren’s elbows move slightly against Hux’s with what must be minor hand gestures, flicks of the wrist, attempts at physical manipulation. He changes his wording every now and then, experimentally, but his tone only grows more splintered, and the troopers’ responses only grow more agitated.

At a word from the captain, they cock their guns.

The sound triggers a visceral response in Hux (run, hide, fight), ratchets his pulse to eleven. Ren’s voice is breaking in frustration, and the troopers have advanced, and the barrel of an F-11D hangs centimeters from Hux’s face, and holy fuck. This is _bad_.

Ren’s an incredible fighter, and he’s taken no time away from his saber training for his duties as Supreme Leader, but nevertheless it’s ten against two, and the troopers’ formation--programmed into them, like the rest--won’t allow for any fell swoops.

Hux has his own blaster, but he’ll somehow have to draw faster than the five troopers on his side can pull their triggers, which won’t be managed without some kind of distraction. Hux will go down as soon as he makes a move, and they’ll shoot Ren in the back while he’s dealing with the troopers in front of him. Hux at least won’t have to face prison, but it-- Isn’t fair. To Ren.

Not after he risked everything to go back for Hux. Not when he could walk away from this.

“Step aside, buddy,” says the captain. He’s moved entirely to Ren’s side now, so Hux can’t monitor him. “We don’t want to go through you, but we will.”

Ren may not deserve better than this, but he should get a chance at it. If only for what he tried to do for Hux. Whatever he apparently still saw in him that made him want to drag him off the _Finalizer_ and into the unknown. Hux will be forever indebted to him--there’s only one way to even the scales.

“You’ve got the wrong man,” Ren is saying, to the one trooper who’s listening.

He nudges Ren again, inhales sharply. Parts his lips. The words congeal on the tip of his tongue: _“Just go.”_

But before he can manage them, Ren’s speaking, angled ever-so-slightly toward Hux’s ear. His hair brushes Hux’s cheek. “When I say,” he murmurs.

“What?” Hux hisses back, swallowing back what he meant to say before he’s realized it.

“Look, buddy--” starts the captain, terse now. He sounds like he’s moving, possibly increasing his vulnerability, and _oh._ There was a reason Hux almost loved Ren, once.

His arm moves behind Hux; air greets Hux’s elbow where Ren’s used to be.

“Now,” he whispers, as the sickening crackle of his saber splits the air. It’s close enough that Hux can feel its heat on his face, smell the ozone it emits in contact with the oxygen atmo.

There’s a momentary wave of terrified _oh shit_ ’s, and shock paralyzes the troopers long enough for Hux to draw his blaster. He fires before he can think twice about the horror of killing his own people, his own _project,_ and the first bolt sinks home with a whine.

Behind him, the saber sings against deflected bolts, tears through flesh in a staccato of crackling strokes. Hux keeps firing, dodging plasma even as the captain calls the troopers to break formation and defend his own side.

Smoke fills the air. The saber hisses and snarls. Bolts whistle red through the air. Hux’s finger doesn’t leave the trigger. It’s been a decade since his last firefight, and his heart is in his throat. His hands, however, are steady from target practice.

He takes down two more troopers, when a bolt whines behind him. He whirls in time to see it stopped mid-air, still and crackling as if suspended from above. Hux takes down the trooper behind it with ease, and ducks out of the way as it finds its mark in the temple of a soldier behind Ren.

Hux turns, having cleared his side between Ren’s efforts and the captain’s orders. Only three remain standing on Ren’s side, all intent on the arc of the saber. Hux takes one, and Ren deflects another’s bolt into her own throat. He takes down the captain last, summoning the trooper’s blaster from his hand and slashing him across the chest.

As Ren retracts the saber, the captain and his gun clatter to the ground simultaneously, leaving silence, smoke, and the smell of lightning. Ten bodies circle Hux and Ren’s feet, and they’re both breathing hard. As the adrenaline drains, Hux’s wound registers the pain of rapid motion. He holsters his blaster, then leans forward slightly, right arm wrapped across his body so his hand presses his ribs. He smiles anyway, feeling delirious.

Ren turns toward him, full lips shaking, soot streaking his face, inhales coming ragged and winded. The streetlight catches in his hair, and for a moment, Hux forgets about Starkiller and thinks he’s never seen anything more beautiful.

“Holy shit,” Ren breathes, and he smiles too, just a little. “Holy shit.”

“Yes,” Hux says, between gasps. He grabs Ren’s left arm, whether for support or simply for the contact, he’s too bleary to say. “That. That was. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Ren replies, and wraps his own right hand around Hux’s slim bicep. He’s putting too much weight on Hux, leaning on him, even. His breathing has nowhere near regulated. “We--” he says, and coughs a little, “we have to keep moving. We’ve got to get the ship.” He wheezes for a solid ten seconds before recovering. Hux tightens his grip, as if he could hold him upright. “They’ll send local cops, we--”

“I know,” Hux says, his own breathing still shallow. “But are you in any condition to--”

Ren cuts him off. “I have to be. I have to do it.”

He can’t. He’s still beautiful, but he isn’t fit to pilot a ship--and possibly get it off the ground with the Force, should their combined tinkering skills fail--tonight. They’ve come too far to go down in Hux’s first-ever shuttle crash, into a pear orchard outside Daro City.

“Well,” Hux says, and clears his throat. “I can’t.” It’s true. His side is killing him, and his brain is scattered in infinite directions, nerves frayed beyond control. Neither of them can even fucking breathe.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Hux says, and injects all the humility he can muster into his tone, “let’s regroup tonight. There’s a hotel up the street. Let’s lie low, rest, and start fresh in the morning. I need it, at any rate, though I can’t speak for--”

Ren’s been looking at him with a keen sort of sadness, gaze straying to Hux’s ribs. “I need it,” he interrupts, and meets Hux’s eyes again. “Can you walk?”

Hux nods, but takes his arm.

 

* * *

 

Less than an hour later, Hux finds himself half-dressed, stretched across a lumpy mattress in a forty-credit single room that reeks of fungus and cigarras. Ren’s leaning over him, fingering the filthy edges of his current bacta patch. His hair hides most of his profile, but he’s probably smirking.

He’s getting to change it after all. By the time they reached the room, Hux was fit for neither the contortions required to change it himself, nor the argument with Ren about why he should anyway. Ren helped him out of the tunic and eased him onto his back in the bed, which is sized somewhere between a single and a full--a single, perhaps, for something slightly larger than a human.

“Doesn’t look bad so far,” Ren says, and without warning, rips off the patch.

Hux bites his lip, hissing a breath, and blinks back the sting in his eyes at the sudden pain.

“Was that okay?”

“Yes,” Hux grits out, “just get on with it.”

Ren says nothing else, just turns to the night table to retrieve the damp and threadbare hotel washcloth apparently designated to clean Hux’s wound. It’s almost terrifyingly unsanitary, but hopefully the bacta will take care of any microbes it picked up in the hotel laundry.

The warm pressure of it hurts at first, but the initial pain soon levels out into something almost soothing. The sensation of layers of blood, dead skin, and dried bacta coming up is refreshing, and Ren’s hands are cautious.

“How does it look now?” Hux prompts, when Ren appears uninterested in offering a prognosis.

“It hasn’t opened back up,” he replies, “which surprised me.”

Hux has no clear idea what to make of that, so opts for something close to a joke. “You really thought you did that poor a job the first time?”

Ren doesn’t laugh. “I don’t remember much about the first time.”

“Oh.”

He apparently tended Hux before he came down from his mania, in which case it’s shocking Hux survived.

Ren sets down the washcloth and glances around the night table, cursing softly before extending his hand in the general direction of Hux’s rucksack. The Force sends the spare bacta patch to it, and _right_ . It wasn’t just Ren’s dubious first aid skills that saved Hux on the _Lambda_ -class.

Hux’s face heats up, and he twists his fingers into the sheets. He’s so fucking _pathetic_ , and Ren keeps saving him over and over again, like he’s worth something. Fuck, he couldn’t even convince the troopers he spent his entire career programming not to kill him. He pinches the bridge of his nose and stares at the smoke-stains blotting the ceiling.

The tear of the fresh patch’s wrapper calls him back to the present. To Ren, who’s opened the thing with his teeth, and is extracting it, unpeeling it, and finally holds it over the wound.

“Ready?” he asks softly, a paradoxical warmth in his eyes. He shouldn’t be looking at Hux’s bare chest like that--like it’s a crippled animal in need of rescuing. He’d rather Ren’s gaze be hungry--as if Hux were a piece of meat to size up, like long ago--than tender. Hux can reciprocate the former, but this latter he’s sure he’s unlearned.

“Hux?” Ren repeats.

“Yes,” Hux stammers, “yes, go ahead if you like.”

Ren does. The coolness of the new patch sinks into Hux’s skin, tingling across the wound with a numbing sensation. Ren smooths over the edges with the precision he must still use to fix his lightsaber, then lifts his hands with a satisfied _hmm_.

It shouldn’t feel abnormal, the sudden lack of contact, but after hours uncounted with Ren’s shoulder pressed into his, his fingers at Ren’s elbow, Ren’s back against his, Ren’s hands putting him back together,  the absence is striking. The room seems several degrees cooler without Ren’s warmth above him, leaching through Ren’s fingertips and under Hux’s skin.

Ren studies Hux for a few seconds longer. He’s still mere centimeters away, not yet out of reach, and it would be so easy to reach up, take his hand, and tell him not to let go. It would, of course, be a pathetic show of weakness, of need, but has today been anything else?

Hux swallows, fidgets, considering, but after a moment, Ren’s expression hardens into something stony and somehow disappointed. He turns toward the night table to collect the cloth and the patch wrapper, then retreats toward the room’s grimy fresher without giving Hux the chance to say _thank you_.

(He’s already disappeared into the yellow-lit doorway by the time Hux realizes he should have spoken sooner.)

Ren takes a few minutes in the fresher, allowing Hux time to shuck his leggings and fold them beside the night table. He can’t have them getting the bed dirty. The sheets are likely unsanitary enough on their own.

When Ren emerges, he grabs spare bedding from the closet beside the refresher, spreads the  bleach-spotted coverlets on the couch across the room, and only speaks to Hux to check if he can turn the lights out.

He does so, and folds himself onto the couch with a series of creaks and quiet _damnit_ ’s in the dark. He goes still for a moment, and Hux begins to relax into the pillow, letting his eyes sink shut. He’ll deal with Ren’s apparent silent treatment in the morning, thank him properly once they’re both somewhat recovered.

He breathes deeply, ignoring the stale tabac scent on the air, and focuses on the _nothing_ behind his eyelids.

But before he can drift off, the couch-springs groan again, jolting him back to full alertness. Ren must be changing positions. It isn’t a terribly broad, long, new or clean couch, and it’s certainly shorter than Ren himself. Ren, however, had assisted Hux into the bed, and made no claim on it, given the injury.

Hux can picture him curled into himself on his side, knees hanging off the cushions, or stretched all the way out, feet dangling off the arm. The frame creaks again, and he catches the brush of Ren’s bare and massive legs against the upholstery.

Ren signed up for this, of course, saving the man with the wound that above all can’t be folded in on itself, but neither of them will get any rest this way, Hux for the racket of his tossing about and Ren for the sheer physical discomfort, along with the high chances of rolling off onto the floor.

Hux turns, as best he can while keeping the bacta patch level, and rationalizes this. They both need to be well-rested for tomorrow, and Ren-- Ren deserves. Better sleep than he got on the shuttle, or than he’ll get on that shoddy couch.

This doesn’t have to mean anything, and Ren should know by now that it doesn’t. Or shouldn’t.

(And besides, the bed is cold.)

“Come up here,” Hux says into the shadows, bleary in his own ears.

“What?” Ren’s voice comes muffled, like he’s got his face pressed against one of the thin cushions.

“You heard me,” Hux responds, clipped now. Too exhausted to drag out this bullshit. “Just come up.”

The couch creaks as Ren shifts. He’s far clearer now. “You want me,” he says slowly. “In bed with you.”

The nerve of him. “Not when you put it like that.”

“I’m fine over here,” Ren replies, impudent.

“No, you aren’t. You need rest, and you quite obviously won’t get any on that thing.”

Ren’s quiet for a moment, then the cushions creak promisingly. “This is a really shitty couch.”

Hux snorts at the spackled ceiling. “And this bed feels like a topographical map of Starkiller, but it at least has leg room.”

Ren’s feet hit the carpet. “You’re sure?”

“For fuck’s sake, Ren. I just told you.”

The couch grumbles a final time as Ren stands, then crosses the floor. The pinkish moonlight filtering in through the thin curtains shows out his bare chest and the Order jodhpurs he’s put back on. He rounds the foot of the bed, and Hux thinks better of asking him to take them off for cleanliness’ sake.

Ren pauses on the far side of the bed, and Hux inches as close to the edge of the bed as he can, making room. Ren eases himself onto his own side, mattress dipping under his added weight. He tosses for a moment, tugging at the sheets and blankets to make himself comfortable.

The bed is small, and they’re lying perhaps two centimeters apart, close enough for Hux to appreciate Ren’s body heat, for his shoulder to brush Hux’s at the slightest movement. They both lie stiff after a number of unintentional touches and muttered apologies.

A couple argues in the room next door, and the floors creak beneath the stained carpet. What must be a police siren wails outside, and Hux wonders what the investigators will make of ten foreign corpses shot and slashed to death under a streetlamp. Hux studies the smoke-stains, and is too rigid to sleep.

“Hux?”

Hux feigns tiredness anyway. “Hmm?”

“Thank you for inviting me up.” There’s something both formal and childish in his tone, which comes dangerously close to making Hux laugh.

“Well.” Hux stops to clear his throat. “It’s an important day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Ren says, as if to end the conversation. But he makes no move to relax.

Hux won’t get any sleep like this, and the silence is agonizingly tense. “Tomorrow,” he says. “What kind of ship are you hoping to find?”

“I don’t know. Preferably something with a half-tank of fuel already.” His smile is audible.

“What about a functioning navigational system?”

Ren snorts. “That might be asking for too much, Gr--” He starts in on Hux’s former title, but cuts himself off in time. “--Hux.”

Hux doesn’t bother commenting on Ren’s form of address. Either way, it would be salt in the wound. “I suppose we’ll find out,” he says, as lightly as he can.

“May the Force be with us,” Ren shoots back.

Hux hides his laugh in his hand, and silence falls between them again, easier this time, but far from companionable. Hux is careful not to touch Ren as he lowers his hand, and they both lie rigid for another few moments.

Ren breaks the quiet next, in a rush like the breaking of a dam. “I was wondering if you had any ideas.”

The flow stops after the single sentence, though. Fucking cryptic, as usual. Hux is about to have to prompt him, but he picks up on his own.

“About what to do. After we clear Daro.”

The question wraps an icy hand around Hux’s insides, and the truth is that he doesn’t. Have any ideas. It’s terrifying.

“Get to the next planet, I suppose,” he offers.

“And after that?” Ren goes on, and shifts for the first time, the mattress creaking with it. “Just keep hopping worlds forever?”

Hux snorts and deflects. For once, the strategy isn’t actually his job. “You honestly had no plan at all besides getting us both off the _Finalizer_ , did you?”

It takes Ren a moment to respond, and when he does, it’s with black-hole gravity. “There’s never been anything for me outside the Order.”

It isn’t technically true, but Hux doesn’t argue. Any happiness Ren could have had with the Light would have been synthetic and incomplete, compared to the Dark he took for himself.

“Me neither,” Hux says, and no argument could be made on his end. It isn’t what he wants to dwell on. “What would you do?” he asks. “If you could do anything you wanted to, moving forward, what would you do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to think about it.”

Hux gives the smoke-stains a mirthless smile. “Well, I suppose we’ve got time to figure it out.”

“‘We’?” Ren echoes, almost instantly. He’s caught the slip before Hux does.

_We._ And Hux could correct him, could shut him down, could lie and say that when he said it, he meant they would each be figuring out their own separate futures, separately, as soon as they cleared Daro. He isn’t sure what he meant, but it wasn’t that.

He certainly isn’t going to lie about it, not now, not with Ren lying stiff again on the other side of the bed, not when he actually attempted to sleep on the galaxy’s flimsiest couch because he assumed Hux wouldn’t want him, or what he did to the troopers or his proffered arm and tender hands.

“So it would seem,” Hux says. Admits.

“Okay.”

The silence stretches between them for a long and uncomfortable moment. Ren relaxes slightly, and his arm nearly brushes Hux’s, shooting an electric charge under his skin; his body heat warms the sheets and Hux’s bare skin.

The threadbare curtains remain inadequate to keep out the vaguely rosy moonlight. It spills across the bed, catching in Ren’s hair. He stares at the ceiling, gnawing his lip. Down the hall, a door slams, and the walls creak.

Hux clears his throat, unnecessarily. “Ren?”

Ren deserves--to hear this.

“Yeah.” Ren doesn’t turn his head, and the words stick momentarily in his throat.

Hux swallows and continues on sheer inertia, “You were right. I’m sorry. I should have--” Fuck, he’s babbling. He pauses momentarily, collecting himself. “I haven’t thanked you.”

“You’re welcome,” Ren says flatly, as if bored with the topic after pursuing it too much himself. The shadows conceal the fine points of his expression, in profile.

“No, I mean it,” Hux insists. Ren isn’t allowed to dismiss him. This is too important. “This--everything here, and whatever you do next--would be much easier for you if you weren’t dragging around an infirm co-conspirator.”

Ren smiles at that for some reason, a visible tug at the corner of his lip. There’s something unbearably bashful in it. “Well, I wouldn’t have gotten far with the shuttle tracker still--”

Suddenly, Hux can’t stand it. He rolls over and kisses the rest of the sentence from Ren’s lips.

Ren makes a startled, breathless sound at first, but sinks into Hux’s rhythm. His lips are dry, almost peeling, but indulgently full as ever. Hux’s tongue soon pushes past them, tracing Ren’s palate, his teeth. He tastes of lingering daelfruit juice, and the ozone scent of the lightsaber has sunk into his skin.

He returns the kiss with increasing fervor, biting at Hux’s lips even as he pulls back for breath. He barely lets Hux inhale before his lips are back on Hux’s, his own tongue probing the curve of Hux’s mouth, lips enveloping Hux’s, swollen and voracious. His fingers work into Hux’s hair, raking across the back of his skull with breath-taking friction.

After far too little time he draws back, breathless as Hux, pupils blown wide. “I missed you,” he whispers. “I missed you so much.”

Hux’s eyes prickle suddenly, and he blinks against it, swallows against the dryness in his throat. He doesn’t trust his voice, so he bends down again. Gives in again. To this. Whatever it is.

(Whatever it is, he has nothing else.)

His lips have barely brushed Ren’s when Ren pulls back again, letting their noses bump gently.

“Your side,” Ren says, sitting up slightly. With the shift, Hux feels the outline of Ren’s cock against his own thigh, half-hard already. It sends a jolt of heat to Hux’s groin.

“What about my side?” Hux grinds against him experimentally, receiving a welcome gasp in response.

“You should lie back,” Ren says, hoarsely. “Let me--” He doesn’t finish, instead wraps a hand around Hux’s side. He doesn’t so much flip him onto his back as ease him down onto his side of the bed, like he might shatter.

Ren hovers over him, leaning down while clearly trying to avoid putting weight against Hux’s left side. His hair curtains Hux’s face on either side, and his lips are mere centimeters from Hux’s own.  “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Hux manages, and arches up to catch his lips again, rolling his hips. Ren responds in kind, on what must be instinct. The blaster wound stings slightly under the pressure. Hux barely registers it, but flinches anyway.

Ren draws up as if struck. “Sorry, I--”

Hux pulls him back down. “In the morning,” he murmurs, “may that be the least of my bruises.”

“Hux--” Ren starts, but a smile has spread across his lips--a real one, baring crooked teeth.

In reply, Hux kisses him again, fiercer, teeth clacking, working his left hand through Ren’s hair as his right slips down Ren’s side to toy with his waistband.

Ren’s breath hitches at the touch at his hip, and he draws back. Again. There’s something charming in the hesitance, though, in the quiver of his lip even as he’s rock-hard against Hux’s own erection.

“Are you sure?” he murmurs, gaze darting across Hux’s face. His dilated pupils could swallow galaxies whole, and his hair brushes Hux’s cheek.

He’s beautiful, and Hux has seldom been so sure about anything.

“I want this,” he says, and reaches up to traces his thumb over the ridge of Ren’s scar. “I want you.” Ren’s eyes flutter shut, and he nuzzles into Hux’s touch as Hux trails down his cheek, swollen lips brushing the heel of Hux’s hand.

It’s nearly pitiful, the way he welcomes this, his vulnerable, relieved, almost thankful expression. But at the same time, it’s no coincidence that he’s only so malleable now, when he has nothing to offer Hux but himself.

And somehow, in this drafty hotel room, between the flimsy mattress and his body heat, he’s enough.

Hux runs his thumb further down, tracing the scar as it threads down Ren’s neck, across the dip of his collarbone, pausing where it stops at his shoulder. Ren shudders as the movement ceases, an obscene clench of the muscles in his chest as his breath hitches audibly.

His eyes open, and Hux leans up into him, leaving perhaps a centimeter between their mouths.

“Fuck me,” Hux all but breathes, and if it comes out more asthmatic-hoarse than sexy-hoarse, Ren doesn’t seem to care.

“Okay,” Ren says, and closes the distance between their lips again.

Hux doesn’t mind. He’s making up for two years of bitterness, mistrust, and lost time.

Without breaking the kiss, he wraps his legs loosely around Ren’s waist. The shift in position jars his wound, but he’s more concerned with the heat pooling in his groin. Ren ruts against him, pressing him deeper into the thin mattress, only to pull back, nuzzling Hux’s cheek.

“You want me this way?”

“Yes.” Hux can feel his pulse in his cock, and Ren is hard along his own thigh, pressing into Hux’s. He only remembers the aftermath of last time, and he _wants._ “I don’t--” He breaks off into a startled sigh as Ren mouths along the shell of his ear. “I don’t think,” he starts again, breathless, “my wound could handle anything more strenuous.”

Ren pulls back slightly, something like sympathy flickering across his face. “Okay,” he says after a moment, and leans in to kiss Hux’s throat. His lips are gentle--this will leave nothing like a mark--but Hux tips his head back, allowing him access.

“There’s lube,” Hux says into Ren’s hair, “in my bag.”

“Okay,” Ren murmurs, but tilts his head up to capture Hux’s lips again. He kisses tenderly, languidly, unintrusively. Sucks briefly at Hux’s lip, tugging it down. Pulls back.

“Okay,” he says again, against Hux’s mouth.

As he makes to dip down for another kiss, Hux splays his hand gently across his pectorals, holding him back. “I can get it myself if you’ll--”

“No,” Ren replies, “I’ll get it. Lie back.” He peels himself off of Hux and swings his legs over the side of the bed, leaving a burst of cold in his place on Hux’s bare chest. He throws a lingering look at Hux.

“I’ll be right here,” Hux says, with a smile and a shooing motion.

“I know.”

The mattress creaks as Ren’s weight leaves it, and Hux glances back to the dark blots on the ceiling. How many other destitute lovers have numbed each other here? (Have mended each other?)

He sits up stiffly, side throbbing, and arches to slip out of his underwear. He flings it over the side of the bed for tomorrow’s Hux to worry about and spreads his legs, planting his fleet flat and stretching as best he can without employing his unlubed fingers.

Ren returns quickly, naked and holding the bottle of lube. The moonlight plays across his solid chest, showing the contours of muscle and the white arabesks of scar tissue, snaking across his collarbone, puckering the skin above his left hip. His cock stands flush, dark-red against his pale stomach, impressive as Hux has remembered it. He’s so beautiful it hurts, and he runs his free left hand through his hair.

He pauses at the foot of the bed and breathes, “Fuck.”

His gaze runs across Hux’s body, taking in his exposed rim, the arc of his own erection, then lingering on his face, as if he doesn’t see the glaring white and absurdly unsexy bacta patch covering most of his left side.

It isn’t quite the meat-appraiser’s glance, but it’s far from pitying--the look of the desert wanderer who’s found an oasis against all odds, and who’s praying it isn’t a mirage.

After a few more motionless seconds, Hux gestures vaguely toward his torso, indicating the bacta patch, his bruised and prominent ribs; his cock, insignificant compared to Ren’s. “Is it that horrifying?” he says, trying his best to smirk when he’s achingly hard.

Ren blinks rapidly. “No, fuck no, I just--” He drags the back of his left over first his left eye, then his right. “Shit,” he murmurs, thickly.

“Come here,” Hux says.

Ren does, the mattress dipping again under his weight. Instead of kneeling between Hux’s legs and getting to work, he puts down the lube entirely and lowers himself horizontally again, elbows framing Hux’s ribs.

Before Hux can question it, he dips his head to lick a slow, white-hot stripe up the underside of Hux’s cock. It sends a fresh flare of heat into the pit of Hux’s stomach, and his cock throbs.

“Ren, what are you--” he starts, but Ren has gone in for a second time.

Hux’s breath hitches against his will, and his entire body shudders. His hands stray to Ren’s hair. He tugs slightly, eliciting a stuttered exhale from Ren. Hux feels it, a puff of air against the sensitive skin of his shaft.

“Stop that,” he says. “I want to come on your cock.”

He has no doubt he’ll still be able to. Between his Force and five years’ experience, Ren knows the inside of Hux’s body better than he does.

Ren shivers, muscles tensing. He looks up at Hux. “Say that again,” he says, soft but forceful.

“You heard me.”

“Say it again. Please.” Ren’s eyes are bright, overblown pupils catching the spare moonlight.

There’s a part of Hux that would say anything, all night long, to make Ren shudder like that again.

Nonetheless, he tries to snort. (But he’s too breathless.)  “Now you’re begging me to beg you.”

In response, Ren tips his head down and licks again, dragging his tongue languidly up Hux’s length, like he’s trying to taste Hux’s heartbeat in the vein there. Once he reaches the tip, he lingers, catching the precome that’s pearled there. He looks up again, raises his eyebrows, and swirls his tongue across his lips.

Hux’s cock twitches under Ren’s chin, and _fuck_ , he shouldn’t be this close, this soon. Ren’s looking up at him from under mussed hair, full lips shining, slick with spit and the beginnings of Hux’s release. It’s thoroughly debauched, absurdly decadent, and forty-eight standard hours ago, Hux wouldn’t have stood for it.

Ren’s tongue flicks out again, dark even against his swollen lips, and Hux can’t stand it.

“Kylo Ren,” Hux says, enunciating as clearly as possible, “I want to come on your cock.”

Ren smiles slowly, tries to stop it by biting his lip, but gives up and meets Hux’s eyes. “Good,” he says, with a sudden air of bravado. He starts to shift up onto his knees.

Once vertical again, his gaze wanders up and down Hux’s body all over again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he murmurs, with the same air of disbelief he had at the foot of the bed.

For a second, Hux wonders if he’s supposed to reassure him, tell him the kind of melodramatic thing he likes to hear about how Hux is all and only his.

But he recovers quickly, picks up the discarded lube, and squeezes a generous portion onto his thick right index finger. He looks pointedly between Hux’s legs. “Do I need to do you, or--”

“Yes,” Hux admits, flushing. Thank the Force that his face is out of the moonlight. “It’s been a while.”

Ren quirks his lip, apparently buoyed. “Glad to hear that,” he says, because of course he heard _all and only yours._ Hux doesn’t bother bringing him back down.

Fingers slicked, he leans forward to trace Hux’s rim. Even that small contact feels momentous, electric. Hux shudders, inhales.

“Fuck, you’re ready,” Ren observes.

“As I’ve made obv--” Hux snaps back, but can manage nothing more before Ren has abruptly pressed into him, pushing past the ring of muscle to stretch him.

He moves at a leisurely pace, tenderly. It feels incredible, sends heat rushing to Hux’s aching cock. He can’t stop the little gasp in the back of his throat, the high-pitched sound that’s far too much like a whine.

“Feel okay?” Ren murmurs.

In answer, Hux closes his eyes and tilts his head back, a form of surrender, as he takes a second of Ren’s fingers, then--after a few breathless moments of scissoring--a third.

There’s a wet and filthy sound with each of Ren’s movements, punctuated by Ren’s labored breathing and Hux’s sharp inhales. Hux hardly registers the baseness of it.

He feels impossibly full, blood singing, light-headed for all he’s mostly horizontal. It’s been far too long, and Ren is almost uncharacteristically tender, murmuring about how good he feels, how tight, making sure no movement comes as a surprise. It would be jarring were it not so charmingly accommodating, so obviously an effort to acknowledge Hux’s wound, to show he won’t lose control.

After a few electrifying movements, Ren pulls out, and Hux opens his eyes with the shock of the emptiness, gasping softly before he’s realized it. Ren holds his gaze, something unbearably tender in it.

“I missed you letting me do this.” His left hand caresses the inside of Hux’s thigh. It’s a soft touch, but it still shoots sparks through Hux’s nerves. “I couldn’t fucking stand it, Hux.”

Hux raises his eyebrows in his best pantomime of cockiness. “You missed my tight arse?”

“Yeah,” Ren replies, with a laugh that catches in the back of his throat, “and your pretty cock and that little sound you make when you’re coming apart. And touching you--” He moves his still-slick right index finger up to ghost over Hux’s taint, hardly brushing the skin, tantalizing, until he reaches the sensitive place behind Hux’s balls, strokes once. “--right here.”

Hux hates the carnal, keening sound that escapes him at the gentle touch. “Your cock, Ren,” he grits out, dizzy.

“Yes, sir.”

With an unbearable smirk, Ren picks up the lube again to slick his cock. Hux buries his fingers in the sheets, clutching madly to keep his hands occupied. If he touched himself, he could get off to this alone, the sight of Ren’s long, thick fingers working his own magnificent cock.

Once finished, Ren’s lip twitches, as he surveys Hux again, framed by Hux’s thighs. “I’ll go slow,” he says, positioning himself. “For your side.”

“No need--” Hux starts, but is cut off into a sharp, strangled sigh as Ren sinks into him, centimeter by centimeter of solid heat. On reflex, he wraps his legs around Ren’s waist again, easing his way.

His entire body feels hot, too light and too heavy all at once. He loops his arms around Ren’s neck, fingertips of his right hand digging into the muscle between Ren’s shoulder blades.

He purses his lips, dimly aware of the walls’ thin plaster, but shudders a breath as Ren bottoms out.

Fuck, he’s missed it, too: the press of Ren’s chest against his ribs, the incredible ache of Ren’s cock inside him, splitting him in two.

It feels like a form of atomic fission. Strip a thing to its essence, break it into the unrecognizable pieces that form it. Wait for an external force to act upon it and remake it into something new.

Ren rolls his hips, settling himself, and asks if this is okay, or how it feels or something like that. Hux makes a strained noise of approval as Ren draws out slightly, then thrusts back in, slow and careful. He strikes Hux’s prostate, sending an jolt through his nerves, but it’s nowhere near hard enough. Hux rocks into him, arching upward, hoping Ren will take the hint.

Ren thrusts again, more confidently now, but no less gently, draws out slow and sultry. It’s the damn blaster wound--if Ren didn’t think he’d fall to pieces, he’d have pounded him halfway through the mattress by now. It still feels good. Hux’s cock pulses, caught between their bodies.

Ren sinks into him again, and Hux can’t take it.

“You can go harder.” He pinches Ren’s neck as Ren draws back, and Ren flinches. “I’m not going to break apart.”

Ren pulls back enough to meet Hux’s eyes, kiss him as he presses back in. “I’m taking no chances,” he whispers.

But his pace picks up considerably hereafter--it isn’t quite what Hux would set were he riding Ren, or even if he were on top--but it’s better, closer to the punishing rhythm Ren knows he prefers: the one that would render him incapable of conscious thought beyond the saber-scent of Ren’s hair, his own impossible stretched-thin fullness, and the places their bodies meet--sweat-slick skin, swollen lips,  Hux’s arms and legs tangled hopelessly around Ren, clinging.

Hux arches into him over and over, despite the sharp pain in his side. Ren tells him he feels fucking incredible, how tight, how hot. Hux is barely articulate, and his left hand has found its way into Ren’s hair.

He wants nothing more than to scream Ren’s name, but the walls are thin, and they are wanted men.

Ren pushes in again, hitting his prostate. “You look so good,” he murmurs. “You look so good spread out like this.”

Pleasure singing through his bloodstream, Hux bites his lip against a shout, emitting something more like a whimper. He doesn’t care. Not about that.

He can’t shout Ren’s name.

Ren pulls back again, with a kiss to Hux’s collarbone, then languidly thrusts back in, gradula nd inevitable. Hux’s cock throbs, and he isn’t even touching it, hasn’t even tried, too exhausted.

_Ren_ . He doesn’t say it--he can’t--but he thinks it as hard as he can, loud as a failing engine, that and every other name this man has known or borne. Hux wants all of them. All of _him._

His hair brushes Hux’s face as he bottoms out once more. When he rolls his hips, it feels like he’s handed Hux the galaxy all over again.

“Fuck,” Ren breathes, hoarse, “fuck, I’m close, I--”

He comes inside Hux with a new burst of warmth, eyelids fluttering shut, full lips parting in a wordless cry. Between the sensation of Ren’s release and the friction of his body against Hux’s cock as his muscles relax, Hux’s orgasm follows. He spills onto his own stomach, Ren softening inside him.

Ren props himself up to pull out, but doesn’t get off of Hux. He leans over him again, brushes a stray strand of hair off Hux’s forehead with warm fingers. His mouth and dimples don’t show it, but there’s a smile at the corners of his eyes.

“How was that?” he whispers.

Hux doesn't respond, just loops his arms around Ren’s neck. He pulls him back down until the tips of their noses brush, then kisses him, unhurried despite the mess.

 

* * *

 

The bed feels much larger once Hux has given up on notions of personal space.

Half an hour later, he remains flat on his back, now with Ren’s right arm draped across his chest, Ren’s head pillowed just above the uninjured ribs of his right side. His side rises and falls, and his breathing comes steady and even. Hux runs his hand idly through Ren’s hair, fingering the soft, thick strands of it. Ren doesn’t stir.

He insisted on cleaning Hux up, after everything, and had done so delicately enough that Hux might have called it sensual, and been down for another round, were they both less exhausted.

As it was, Ren tossed the washcloths back into the refresher and all but collapsed onto the bed, wrapping himself gingerly around Hux in the center of the mattress. He’d fallen asleep within minutes, after a murmured goodnight.

Hux can feel sleep approaching, a black tide slowly dragging his eyelids down, but he forces them open long enough to watch Ren, to appreciate the warm softness of his hair against his chest.

It occurs to Hux that he isn’t sure how many standard cycles it’s been since he lost everything but this man, that time is one of many things that are insignificant now. Regardless, he’ll give Ren another day here, if he wants it. Needs it. He’ll probably sleep at least twelve hours after an indeterminately long day of fitful sleep, physical and Force-related exertion, and finally an orgasm.

Hux could spend the whole day on this simple planet, in this tiny room with its thin walls and tabac-reek, wrapped around Ren, for any given understanding of the term. Ren deserves it. Deserves more than Hux has ever wanted or tried to give him. Now, at least, he has the rest of their lives to attempt it. Now, be everything as it may, he has little else to live for. He pulls Ren tighter, and on impulse, presses his lips to the crown of his head.

The shouting next door has died down permanently, and the room’s heating unit has finally kicked on. Hux lets sleep overtake him, pull him down tangled in Ren.


	3. Epilogue

_ (Ten standard months later) _

 

It’s summer on this side of Calad IV, and Hux works to the languid whir of the ceiling fan. He’s been bent over a wood-cased slugthrower at least twice his own age for the past hour and a half, meticulously affixing a scavenged modern scope to its slim barrel. It might just hold up under it.

It’s a sturdy gun, if its owner’s rhapsodies are anything to judge by, a family heirloom that can only be improved by external accuracy mods. It’s the kind of obsolete weapon you’d have found in a museum on Hosnian Prime. The plaque below it would have read  _ Look how far we’ve come _ , and would have meant it in terms of both the primitive tech and the need for violent contraptions of any kind. 

The curators would have been wrong, of course, and the slugthrower’s Aqualish owner would have kept firing the thing against livestock thieves whether the Hosnian System--or the Order--or the very notion of centralized government--had crumbled or not.

As for Hux, well. If the Order hadn’t crumbled, he’d have better things to do than modify an ancient gun for a hundred credits plus the cost of supplies. Nonetheless, he runs an appreciative hand over the burnished stock. At least it still fires.

It took an unexpected measure of patience to drill far enough into the stock to begin mounting the durasteel rings and base that will hold up the scope. Hux has been stepping in sawdust ever since, flecks sticking to the perspiration on his calves as he hovers between the weapon’s stock and barrel to ensure the scope aligns with the sights--placing and replacing his glass leveling tool, torquing the screws on both rings up and down, hunching down to peer at the crosshairs through the lens

At last tentatively satisfied, he pauses briefly. Pushes a sweat-damp lock of hair out of his face. Gulps down some water from the canteen on his worktable. And lifts the rifle from the vice it’s mounted in. 

The thing’s unloaded, of course, but decades of conditioning bid him treat it as if it were: finger positioned just outside the trigger well, pointed only toward objects he wouldn’t care about destroying. He nestles the stock against his shoulder, cool through the thin fabric of his shirtsleeves; positions his free left hand under the barrel. When he finally squints into the scope, it magnifies shelves of scuffed and scavenged blaster parts, glinting dully in the late afternoon light streaming in through long windows.

Hux has hardly had time to note the adequate alignment of the sights when a creak to his left startles him. He whirls--gun still raised--to face the door, only to find Ren’s neck between the crosshairs: at once sweat-slick and powerful, yet delicate, vulnerable, framed by damp and clinging wisps of hair. It’s jarring--the ugly black  _ x  _ tattooing his pale skin--so much so that Hux sets the gun down, hard, clattering back into the vice.

With both eyes open, he takes in the rest of Ren--hair tied back, a black smudge near his eyebrow, the front of his shirt sweat-soaked but immaculate thanks to the smock he left in his toolshed-turned-workshop behind the house. With an eye to the rifle, he’s spread his hands--as if that would convince Hux he’s unarmed--and quirked his lip slightly upward.

“Finished for the day?” Hux asks. 

“Yeah,” Ren says, and stretches out his hand. The Force sends a damp rag from the workroom’s rickety washbasin into his hand as he steps forward to round the table. “I’m going to have to recrown that Salmari guy’s piece, and I’m not breaking out the lathe at eighteen hundred hours.” Coming to a stop beside Hux, Ren starts wiping sawdust off the black countertop.

“That’s fair.” Hux reaches between Ren’s arms to pick up his screwdriver, then bends to finish tightening the scope-mount screws. They’re pressed close together, thighs mere centimeters apart, working almost on top of each other.

For a moment, the hum of the ceiling fan, the swipe of the cloth, and the squeak of the screw fill the silence. 

“Did you make your list for the salvage auction yet?” Hux asks, without taking his eyes off the rotating torque’s-head. 

“I know what I need,” Ren says, all but dismissively. He reaches around Hux’s waist to get at the dust below the vice. 

“I’m aware of that.” Hux gives the screw a final crank. “But did you  _ make a list _ ?” He sets the screwdriver down and turns abruptly, ducking out from under Ren’s arm to replace his screwdriver in his open toolbox. 

“I’m going with you this week.”

“Since when?” 

Ren hasn’t been to one of the scavenge auctions in town since his and Hux’s shop’s first month open. A telepath is terribly useful when bidding on a low budget, but since business has picked up, Ren’s time is more efficiently spent in the workshop--welding, filing, hammering, fusing.

“Since I decided Salmari’s rifle could wait and I’d rather buy you lunch in town.” Ren sets down the rag and picks up Hux’s canteen. He takes an indulgent swig out of it, then wipes the spot where it was sitting before replacing it. Apparently quenched, he meets Hux’s gaze and raises his eyebrows, as if daring him to argue that logic.

Hux suppresses a smile. “Also fair.”

“Good.” 

Ren flicks his wrist toward the sullied rag, and it hovers a few centimeters above the tabletop. Ren angles his hand back toward the washbasin, but Hux stretches out his own instead. Ren rotates his wrist again, and the cloth sails into Hux’s hand with a wet slap that doesn’t quite sting. Hux wipes down his tool box last, clearing a few specks lingering underneath it. Ren stands still, and Hux can feel his eyes on him.

“So who’s the scope for?” Ren says, conversationally.

Hux looks up from the toolbox to meet Ren’s gaze. The afternoon light shows out gold flecks in his eyes. Hux blinks, and takes a moment to answer. “An Aqualish farmer from up north. She dropped off the slugthrower about two hours ago.”

Ren’s gaze narrows slightly, and his voice pitches down into something like a reprimand. “You should have told me someone was here.”

Hux sighs. He’ll never break Ren of this. “She had her children with her,” he assures him, taking two steps to narrow the distance between them, until they’re close enough that Hux has to angle his chin to meet Ren’s eyes. “It was fine,” he says, “and you would have sensed it if it weren’t.”

“Still.” None of the tension leaves Ren’s voice, but he glances down, then moves his hand to cover Hux’s on the countertop, warm and solid, still damp from the rag. He slips his fingers under Hux’s and runs his massive thumb across the ridge of Hux’s knuckles. 

Hux closes his eyes for the briefest moment, taking in the warmth of his grip and the friction of his skin, the tenderness of his motion and the possessiveness in his eyes. He clears his throat, but lets Ren keep on.

“The frontiersmen up north have had some trouble with gangs,” he volunteers. “They got the customer’s livestock last time, but she’s afraid for the children. She said she realized she couldn’t afford to miss her shot next time, then took the gun and the kids and drove two hours here in a landspeeder because a neighbor recommended us.”

Ren looks up, brows pinched. It crinkles the smudge above his left eye. “We’re getting recommended up north?”

“Apparently we’re doomed to make a name for ourselves.”

Ren snorts at that, then nods to the slugthrower. “You ought to fuck this one up before word gets around to the whole sector.”

He has a point, of course. The last thing either of them needs is the fame that excellence affords. But in the business of security, one must choose his failures wisely.

(Moreover, excellence is a difficult habit to break.)

“The next one,” Hux promises, allowing himself a brief smirk before sobering somewhat. His gaze falls to the weapon. “This one’s needed.”

“To defend the farm?” Ren sounds amused. He stretches behind his head to pull his hair out of its elastic tie. It falls heavy around his shoulders, and catches the light.

“Exactly,” he says, and means,  _ I spent my whole damn life preventing injustice in Wild Space. What makes you think I’d stop now? _

Because Ren is a fucking mind reader, he smiles in response, and  _ fuck _ . He’s so much.

On impulse, Hux licks his free thumb and lifts it to rub at Ren’s smudge, earning him another short laugh. The mark fades a bit, at least, and Hux’s hand takes the long way down--tucks a lock of hair behind Ren’s ear, then traces the delicate, ungainly shell of it, before falling back to his side.

Ren’s hand hasn’t moved from Hux’s, and his smile has softened into a gentle expression heavy with what can only be termed affection. “They should be glad to have you,” he says, after a moment.

Hux extracts his fingers from Ren’s only to pick his hand up again, to press it to the puckered scar on his ribcage, a stroke away from his heart. He holds Ren’s hand there, against the contour of maimed skin he knows is readily tangible through his thin shirt, then meets his eyes. “I’m glad I’m here.”

“Me too,” Ren says, and his eyes are bright. His thumb massages gentle circles into the scar tissue.

After a moment Ren’s hand slips back and around Hux’s waist. His other rises to join it, pulling Hux to his chest. Hux loops his arms around Ren’s neck, pressing his sweat-sticky cheek against Ren’s. The tip of Ren’s nose brushes the back of his neck, and they don’t let go.

The fan whirs, and the light keeps fading. An almost-Sith and a destroyer of worlds embrace beside a farmer’s gun, and no constellations have gone supernovae; no comets disintegrated, nor nebulae flickered out. 

Ren will take Hux to lunch in town tomorrow, and the universe will keep expanding. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hang out with you over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/imperialhuxness)


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